 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Bill Taylor. I'm the executive vice president here at the United States Institute of Peace, and we are very pleased to welcome you here, to welcome many of you back here to the institute, but also many of our German colleagues. It might be the first time that you've been here. If it is, welcome. We're very pleased to have you in this building. Some of you have been here before, I know, but we would be glad to give you a tour of this place. But this building is more than a pretty face. We do good things here. It's a place where we can convene organizations, conferences, discussions, people from around the world here to talk about important things. And we're gathered here today to talk about very important things. Two things in particular that we are going to talk about. One is the cooperation between the United States and Germany in Afghanistan over a long period of time, since 2001. We've obviously had cooperation between the United States and Germany on other things for a longer time, but on Afghanistan in particular, we're going to hear to have a discussion of things that we've learned about that cooperation, that partnership. I remember fondly, my time in Kabul in 2002, where, yes, several people in this room, we worked together. But also, there's my German colleague, Gerhard Schladrof, whom somebody may know. He was a deputy chief of mission at your embassy there. He and I and Karl Eichenberry, who at the time was neither the commander of forces or nor the ambassador, both of which he became later on, but he was the person in our embassy that spearheaded our work with the military, with the Afghan military. And Gerhard Schladrof and the German embassy, as we all recall, was focused on the police. And Gerhard and Karl Eichenberry and I did a lot of traveling together. And this partnership of Americans and Germans was an important part of what we got started there. So I'm very pleased to be able to open this conversation. As I say, there are things to be learned about that cooperation. Andrew Wilder, the head of our Asia Center here at the Institute, is reluctant to say lessons learned. He says, lessons. And so that's an important distinction. If we can talk about the lessons, we'll see if they've been learned. But that's one of the purposes that we're here today to pursue. This is not the first time that we've been gathered here, and many of the people in the only particular on the American side have been here before last March. We had a big conference right in this room. Everybody was very helpful in this thing. Jim Dobbins, whom I'm hoping will show up here soon. But we hope so. It was also here. But this is a series of discussions that we've had here. As I say, the Institute is glad to be able to pull people together for these kinds of discussions. The other important part is the Afghanistan dimension of this discussion. And I'm very glad that we've got representatives from Afghanistan, from the embassy. And the Afghans have a lot to teach us. We have a lot that we can talk about in that context. And it's great to be able to have that voice represented here. Dr. Jackson James is also here. He is the President of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies and co-sponsor of Co-Organizer of this event. So Dr. James, I'll be glad to turn it over to you. Thank you very much. And right on cue we have Jim Dobbins. Thank you, Bill. Ambassador Dobbins has German punctuality in his soul. Thanks very much for the opportunity to be here. This is the first time that AICGS has actually had an opportunity to cooperate with this grand institution. And I was telling the ambassador before that every time I look at this building and I drive by it reminds me of the Sydney Opera House. Marvellous, marvellous Colise here, as we say in German. We are very, very pleased to be doing this program. And I want to particularly thank my colleague, Gail Maddox, who really is the engineer and the architect of this program today. But it's also very timely. I was privileged last night to hear my friend, Maddox, and Bruce Stokes give a very good analysis of where we are 10, 15 years later. It's hard to believe that it was 2001 when this whole action began and now here we are at the end of 2015 and we're still not done. I think that the operative concept here, and I think it was last night I was talking with one of the participants at the meeting about lessons learned. And there's one thing to learn lessons, but there's another whole chapter in operationalizing the lessons. And I think that's where we need to be thinking today. It's not just a question of looking back and saying, how far have we come? It's a question of how far we have to go and how we operationalize things. Let me say something for those of you who have never heard of AICTS or have no idea what we are. The Institute is a research policy think tank that works on German-American relations. It's been around since 1983. And it's also very important to recognize the fact that the Institute is at Johns Hopkins University, the only real think tank in the United States that focused specifically on German-American relations. But we put this context of our work in a number of concentric circles. Germany, the United States, and have a lot of challenges out there, and that's our mantra at the Institute. So this fits very nicely, and I'll say one thing further before introducing General Bakken. My sense is that the time for this is perfect. General Bakken and I were talking last night about the Minister of Defense, Germany's Minister von der Leyen, was just in Afghanistan. And she said a very important sentence where she said, via Bleiben, we're staying here. And I think given that commitment, and Germany has been there since the beginning, the question is will we stay for a longer period of time and what does that mean? Not only for Afghanistan, but most of us are committed to making this a joint and hopefully successful effort. So we're very pleased to be able to provide this opportunity for you all to not only listen to the people that we brought to this discussion, but also listen to you because I think we're all looking for solutions to a very challenging and very perhaps long-term problem that we all have to face together. I want to thank in advance of asking General Bakken to come up here and say a few words to say thank you very much for your wonderful cooperation, you and your colleagues at the embassy, which is also represented by Mr. Ackermann. Very good to have you with us. And I would just say at this point that the collegiality between the ICGS and the embassy is as old as the institute, so we are just continuing along the same line, Dirk. So without any further ado, General Bakken. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm the defense attaché at the German embassy, and I'm wearing my uniform today. Though I must admit that mostly I wear silver clothes because I try to blend in in that environment. And I have been working for the ambassador of Germany here for almost the last three years, and that is quite a fantastic experience. I served 2011 in Afghanistan. I'd like to share a lesson or a lesson learned with you from that time. In fact, and this might sound a little bit pompous, but I claim to be the fourth German general who has ever had U.S. troops under his command in combat. That is a rare thing. In 2010, almost unnoticed by the American public, the Americans did something very, very unusual. They put U.S. troops under the command of a German general. The first one was a surge in 2010. The first one was General Fritz. The second one was General Kneipel. Unfortunately, was wounded heavily in an ID attack in Tadokan. And then I had to take over, so I am number four. You might ask, who was the first one? So I brought a coin. Who was the first one? Who was the first German general? I just mentioned three. I said four. I'm the fourth one. So was General Fritz General Kneipel at me? Who was number one? Sir, you just earned the coin. But you see the time gap between that. So Yorktown, Mazai Sharif. That's quite a distance, isn't it? Well, my lesson learned. I will call in that time when I have to take over. General Petraeus and General Carini to Kabul. And we had to prepare this. And General Carini, like General Petraeus, was very strict on keeping the time that was allocated for your presentation. And so there were 30 minutes for us. 30 minutes to be split up between the army, the police, and also the border police. And, of course, us, naval forces. My job was to explain to General Daut, a guy, or an Afghan, very charismatic leader. I admire very much. Unfortunately, he was killed in the last days of May 2011 in a bomb attack also in Tadokan. I had to tell him that he only had five minutes to speak. But I have to say more. I said, sir, I'm afraid we only have five minutes. And then he smiled at me and he said, okay, I'll do it. But it'll be Afghan five minutes. The next thing for that Khmer's conference was General Petraeus insisted on not having power presentations. So he wanted to do it more the Afghan way to talk about things, you know, exchange of ideas. I don't mention any names, but I think it was an American RC commander who then came up with big printouts of his slides. So he held them in front of him. And he worked with those slides because the order was to have no PowerPoint projection. So he used printouts. Well, my lesson from that is there are no problems in Afghanistan you cannot solve, and as a soldier, you can always outsmart your higher command. Enjoy this conference. Good morning. Oh, great audience. I haven't even looked back. Terrific. Nice to see all of you. And I'm Gail Maddox, and I work at American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. Next to my normal job as a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. It's with greatest pleasure that I introduce our opening speaker today. James Jim Cunningham, ambassador from Afghanistan. From the United States to Afghanistan. And he's uniquely qualified to speak here today in order to open our session. Ambassador Cunningham is an Atlantic Council senior fellow in the South Asia Center. He's the Zalmeh Khalaza chair on Afghanistan there. He served as ambassador to Afghanistan from 2012 to 2014. Prior to that, he was the deputy ambassador in 2011. He's also been ambassador to Israel. He's been ambassador to Hong Kong and Macau. He's been at the U.N. deputy as deputy representative when the troops were first sent to Afghanistan in 2011. In addition to the U.N., which I think is very interesting, he served as chief of staff to the NATO secretary, General Manfred Werner, where he advised during the fall of the wall. He advised on how it impacted NATO. He looked at the impending disillusion of the Warsaw Pact and of the Soviet Union, all of which of course are very important to some of the discussions that we'll have today. So I don't think he could be more suited to address the issues of Afghanistan together with that U.S.-German collaboration that we're going to be talking about today. He's going to open our conference with remarks, and then he will take questions during the panel free this afternoon that looks at the future of Afghanistan and of our presence there. Let me note that the conference is on the record, and I would like to thank you very much, Ambassador Cunningham, for being here and look forward to your remarks. Thank you, Gail. I want to begin by thanking the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies and Dr. Maddox and the United States Institute of Peace for taking up today's important subject and for offering me a chance to participate. I want to use my time this morning to try to place the subject of Afghanistan and U.S.-German cooperation in context and to think more about the future than the past. That is not to say that learning the lessons of the past is not important. To the contrary, it's vital for us to understand, and hopefully learn, what we got wrong in Afghanistan and to understand what we got right. Both will better prepare the United States and our partners for what lies ahead in Afghanistan and in other zones of conflict, even if under vastly different circumstances. In October, the Atlanta Council released a paper co-signed by a bipartisan group of senior former government officials and policy experts, including Ambassador Dobbins, which argued that Afghanistan still matters to American security and there is a way forward to success. It argued for the continued U.S. engagement required to protect American interests and to increase the possibilities for Afghan success, and in particular, to maintain U.S. and coalition military forces and intelligence assets at close to current levels and to leave options open for the next American president. The paper also attempted to place Afghanistan in the broader context of the conflict with violent Islamic extremism, which threatens our citizens, our values, and our way of life. In Afghanistan, there are two complementary processes which need to be underway. First, the international community has over the several past several years put in place the Security and Assistance Foundation for the Afghan government and people to succeed. That success will depend on clarity from the United States and Afghanistan's other partners that the necessary military, financial, and political support will continue, so that Afghans have the time to build on progress made, continue taking responsibility for their own affairs, and Germany has been an exemplary partner in that effort. Second, the national unity government needs to perform and demonstrate achievement to the Afghan people and the international community. The opportunity afforded Afghanistan at this point in its history is really unique and must not be squandered. It won't come again. I repeatedly told my Afghan interlocutors when I was in Kabul. Afghanistan's political class must step up to the challenge of Afghanistan's to be seen as a project worthy of continued international political and military commitment. President Obama's decision not to complete the withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of 2016 is an important strategic indicator of U.S. commitment to Afghanistan's security and to the Afghan national security forces. And I think he has to be commended for making a difficult decision to change course in light of realities and circumstances which have changed rather dramatically. During the debate about these issues in the United States and discussion with our coalition partners, Germany deserves considerable credit for stimulating and working through a review of the need for a longer deployment of military forces in Afghanistan than foreseen in President Obama's original timetable. Germany's recent reaffirmation of its security commitments to Afghanistan after 2016 is an important signal to NATO, our coalition partners, and to the United States. The NATO war summit will be a key milestone in displaying the long-term NATO and coalition support for Afghan security. While I applaud President Obama's decision, I wish it had been taken several years ago. The uncertainty caused by President Karzai's failure to sign the bilateral security agreement, the contention over the Afghan presidential elections, and the planned withdrawal of U.S. and coalition military forces by 2016, undermined Afghan confidence, encouraged the enemies of Afghanistan, and promoted hedging by Afghanistan's neighbors. With that uncertainty ended, it is imperative now that we do all we can to restore a sense of confidence among Afghans that they can succeed. At the same time, the Taliban must come to understand that they will not succeed. I hope that Germany will help the United States lead an effort to develop a reinvigorated sense of international community purpose and commitment. Clarity that Afghanistan will not fail, that Afghanistan will not collapse under Taliban pressure and terror, will be key to the prospects for success and ultimately for peace. Such clarity is also dependent upon the Afghans themselves and on the success of the national unity government. We must continue to do all we can to drive home that message to Afghanistan's leaders. They must meet their responsibility for the future of their country and support the unity government. The United States and our partners, especially Germany, can help Afghanistan become an element of stability for the region and the Islamic world. Given the turmoil in the Islamic world, it is in our strategic interest that we, Germans, Americans, Afghans, and the international community work together to get this right. Looking to the future, with the clarity of continuing American engagement and support of the Afghan security forces, we will want to see if we can stimulate a genuine regional effort to strengthen Afghanistan. This week, during the Heart of Asia meeting in Islamabad, on a new push for peace negotiations and dealing with Afghanistan's enemies, must be matched by actions that demonstrate a new strategic calculation by Afghanistan's neighbors, especially by Pakistan. The prospects for peace are significantly reduced as long as the Taliban and the Haqqani network have the ability to plan and launch operations from Pakistan. Prime Minister Sharif repeated during the Heart of Asia sessions that Afghanistan's enemies will be treated as Pakistan's enemies. The test will be whether Pakistan takes concrete action. While maintaining the integrity of the Afghan National Security Forces effort to provide security is the scene of Qanun for Afghanistan to move forward, the need to generate economic activity is urgent and almost as vital to success. Here again, the restoration of Afghan confidence coupled with performance will be needed. The Brussels Conference on Afghanistan to be hosted by the EU in October is the next step in measuring progress and registering international support for Afghanistan's development and economic growth. The crucial tasks ahead, improving security, creating conditions for peace, building the economy, forging Afghan political unity and commitment are exceedingly difficult. But failure to achieve them would be disastrous for Afghanistan, dangerous for Pakistan and the region, and a threat to all of us. Today's world order is even more dangerous, multi-polar, and more rapidly changing than we might have recently imagined. The institutions we have created after the Second World War and the Cold War are being called into question. The conflict with violent Islamic extremism of which Afghanistan is but one example confronts us with challenges we do not well understand and for which there are no easy answers. Yet we must respond, not just we Americans, but all who are under assault by the threat to the world order we've built. We have not done a good job, neither in the United States, nor in Europe, nor indeed elsewhere in the world. Educating our public is about the long-term and dangerous threat we face from Islamic terror. Recently thrown in our faces by attacks in Turkey, Lebanon, Paris, California, Mali, and elsewhere. In Afghanistan, we have tended to dismiss the Daesh presence as rebranded Taliban, as if that somehow made it less dangerous. But as we have seen in Libya, such indigenous affiliates eventually control ground and connect with the center in Syria. The same could well happen in Afghanistan and may have already happened. Afghanistan is now part of that threat dynamic as well as confronting the threat from the Taliban in al-Qaida. So we face together, the United States and Germany, a broader challenge than Afghanistan. A coherent Western strategy to which Europe must be central will depend on American and German leadership as the two leading powers in the expanding US-European community of values and interests. How Europe contributes to the formulation and implementation of that strategy will depend much on Germany's willingness and ability to exercise leadership. Time Magazine's selection of Chancellor Merkel as its person of the year is recognition not only of her role in Europe, but of Germany's. The United States and its partners are challenged to develop and implement a long-term strategy to defend our people and values while draining the life from the extreme violent ideology and distorted Islamist fundamentalism that animate Daesh, al-Qaida, and others. To do that, Americans will have to answer some fundamental questions as will our partners, such as, are we at war or not? What does that mean in practical terms and in terms of our politics? How can we defend ourselves in a manner consistent with our interests and values? Can we collectively develop a strategy adequate to the threat which brings our immense collective military and political capacity to bear? The answers will not be easy, nor will be the process of trying to find them. And while Americans tend for now to view the challenge as an American problem, it is not. While we can and must lead, we will not be able to deal with it by ourselves. Experienced teachers that ideology cannot be defeated militarily, although military force must be an instrument. This is even more the case in the digital age with the enemy's deaf use of the internet and social media to spread ideology and foment hate and terrorist violence which strikes at the heart of our societies. The threat of violent Islamist extremism can ultimately, the defeat of violent Islamist extremism can ultimately only come from within the Islamic world, which must play a leading role. But the conflict pits what we might call the civilized world, the world that respects the values defined in the UN Charter, and the institutions and rules created to make the world a better, safer, and more prosperous place against a brutal enemy. In this unprecedented conflict, the United States is uniquely placed to organize in Marshall the sustained multilateral, multifaceted effort required to contain and defeat Daesh and ultimately the diseased ideology which inspires it and others. Germany as one of the most important members of Europe must be an important participant in that effort. That, I believe, is the context in which our future work in Afghanistan and the region must be seen. The success of Afghanistan is part of this larger struggle which the civilized world must win. And that, to my mind, is the challenge for future U.S.-German collaboration. We have worked well together many times in the past, including in Afghanistan and in Europe, but we are moving on from that world to one that is more complicated, less certain, and more deadly in our homelands than has been the case for some time. The instruments we have used in the past are strategies for dealing with state-to-state conflict which are still required. Our leadership patterns are not adequate to the terrorist threats as they are evolving today. Our publics are not prepared to cope, so political leadership and domestic politics is also called for. In short, there is much serious work to be done, and I look forward to today's discussion. Thank you. So, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to start with the first panel. I must say I'm remiss on one point, and coming up to the panel is a good point to say this. We have two other partners in this enterprise. One is the German Council on Fine Relations, of which Henning Rieke is a prominent leader, and I am also a former fellow there, so I'm very glad that we're able to do that with them. And the second one is the Deutsche Adventure Gazelle Shoppe, German Atlantic Society. I want to appreciate all the work that went into putting this together on your side of the ocean, Magdalena, and originally with a certain breakfast, with a certain general in front of me that began all of this. So gentlemen, could you take your places on the panel? Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much, Jack Jaynes, for introducing us so nicely, and for providing... This thank goes to all of our partners for providing this great framework to discuss lessons learned of the Afghanistan mission. My name is Henning Rieke. I am head of the USA Transatlantic Relations Program at the German Council on Fine Relations in Berlin, and I do Afghanistan only sporadically, so I'm going to be very tacit here and leave the room for the distinguished panelists that we have. I apologize in the first place for my scratchy voice. This is not the result of too much fun, I can promise, but it's a good reminder for me not to talk too long about the questions on the table. The first panel is about the transatlantic debate about lessons learned, and I think it will be a good opportunity also to look at transatlantic frictions and divisions about how to go ahead in Afghanistan. So when we engage in that process of drawing lessons from this complex and long civil-military operations to come to a joint understanding about the targets, about the achievements, the strategies, the flaws in between, also the difficulties during the transition to retain the trust and confidence of the Afghans while obviously the Western powers have been retreating in part of their functions is I think an important mission that we have. In the 14 years in Afghanistan, I think there are now lines or curves of development and conflict that we can now in hindsight analyze to better look at the future. When we look at the build-up of a state as a whole, which is an achievement that is often underrated during this time, the transatlantic frictions over state-building and counter-insurgency that have been pretty passionate in the years 2007, 2008, the worsening security situation in Afghanistan and the inability to do something against it in the first place. I think these are lines of conflict that play a huge role on the assessment of the Afghanistan mission on our side but also on the Afghan side. What happens still affects, of course, the political daily life of the Afghans. It forms also a part of the narrative that Afghanistan has about the recent past and the development of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and with that it's part of the identity of the Afghan citizens. What we talk about here has a huge impact not only on how we do business but also on how Afghanistan sees itself. And of course, and we heard that in the brilliant short analysis of Ambassador Cunningham, what we did in Afghanistan is somewhat the canvas on which we draw the concept of crisis management now and in the future. And my feeling is that what we talk about here could also have an impact on our understanding how far crisis management could reach. My impression is that the Afghanistan fatigue, the frustration about the things that went somewhat out of hand and went wrong kept us from thinking straightly about possible and appropriate ways to do crisis response and state building in other crisis areas like Libya or Syria. So we might change that. So when looking at the lessons that we learn here about when did compromises that we did on the way turn from prudent and pragmatic in the first place to foul because we understood that they actually became structural deficiencies of our approach in Afghanistan. When did we like drop plans to take action and solve problems that we had postponed earlier on and couldn't do so under new conditions? What were the dynamics of the plans and the strategies that didn't where we wanted to go? I think when we look at these questions from a transatlantic point of view from different approaches from America and Europe and Germany in particular, we have five very distinguished experts on the table here. I could talk about an hour about their achievements and their professional careers but you have access to the bios themselves. I think they are all very knowledgeable and have held professional positions during most of the time of the ISF operation. But they are also, and that is important to remind us, all experts on learning lessons. They have all played part in several processes and projects to draw the lessons from the Afghanistan position. General Jürgen Bornemann had leading positions in NATO as Director General of the International Military Committee in NATO. He was in charge with Afghanistan during many periods of this difficult position. Ali Jalali, a former minister of the interior and the earlier phase of the new Afghan state is one of the leading Afghanistan analysts and experts now at the National Defence University. James Dobbins has been special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan but is also a very knowledgeable expert on crisis response in other difficult parts of the world. John Sobko, the Special Inspector General for Reconstruction in Afghanistan can tell us a story or two about how donor funding has been handled in Afghanistan, in Washington and in other European partner states and Philip Ackerman, of course, the Deputy Chief of Mission in the German Embassy has been also Deputy Head of the Task Force Afghanistan during the time of reorientation of the military profile of ISAF and during the transition. So I think all of these panelists can give very important insights on how the decisions or the strategies and the objectives that we set up in the beginning have been fulfilled or have not been fulfilled. I will start the round with General Bornemann who can also relate to an earlier workshop that we did in April on the comprehensive approach in Afghanistan. I will ask the panelists to stick to eight minutes. I have a nice orange car to show around since you all sit so far away to do this more telepathically but I'm sure that you can discipline yourself and stick with eight minutes so that we have about an hour for questions and discussions later on because we have also in the audience a number of very knowledgeable people. General, please. Thank you very much, Henning. And thanks to the AACGS and the U.S. Institute for Peace for hosting today's conference on Afghanistan and it's indeed a very great pleasure for me and my colleagues to be here in Washington again. It's roughly 14 months ago at breakfast in a hotel here in Washington that Jackson Jains, General Bucking and I discussed in the morning the opportunity to organize an exchange of view on the results, the lessons and the challenges of the Afghanistan engagement between the German Atlantic Association and the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. And today's conference demonstrates that this idea became a reality and therefore I take many thanks for making this possible. And also many thanks to the German Embassy in Washington for their support we received. Dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, more than a decade, thousands of German men and women in uniform served shoulder by shoulder with our American friends and other allies and partner countries at the Hindukusch to contribute to stabilize the country after more than 30 years of civil war so that it never could become a safe haven again for terrorists like Al Qaeda. In April, the German Atlantic Association together with the German Council on Foreign Relations organized a two-days event in Berlin to discuss possible lessons learned from Afghanistan after the end of the mission of ISAF on 31st of December 2014. In a public discussion followed by a one-day workshop with representatives from NATO, members of parliament, German government, and media, we discussed what lessons can be drawn from the engagement of the international community in Afghanistan from a national as well as from a NATO perspective. Let me focus my opening remarks in this panel on two aspects and this is security and comprehensive approach. There was a degree of cautious optimism around the table in Berlin but it was tempered by an appropriation of the multiple threats and difficulties the new leadership in Afghanistan is faced after the end of NATO's active engagement due to many unresolved issues vis-à-vis security, good governance, and development. It is maybe too early to conclude whether 13 years of engagement was a story of success or a failure. To argue everything is good in Afghanistan is as wrong as everything is bad in Afghanistan. Security, good governance, and development these were the three strategic objectives for the engagement of the international community in Afghanistan. They were at the core of the Petersburg declaration in December 2001 when the military and civil assistance to Afghanistan started. And therefore I believe the Petersburg conference on Afghanistan can be seen as the starting point for the comprehensive approach in international crisis management to stabilize, secure, and develop a failed state. A comprehensive approach which sought to integrate the political, military, economic, and humanitarian aspects of policy. Many of the objectives should be implemented simultaneously and this was new for the actors. ISAF as in stabilization operation under UN Security Council resolution to implement the 2001 bond agreements focused on security sector reform led by a framework nation starting with the United Kingdom followed by Turkey and Germany and a separate US-led anti-terror operation enduring freedom on the other side. Both these operations were merged in 2003 into one ISAF NATO-led operation with a four-star US commander on top. And therefore I will not go too much into the detail of the discussions in each of the panels during our Berlin events. The security situation in general was central to the discussion and the comprehensive approach was of particular interest of all participants. In all panels the lack of strategic patience and expectations was identified as one of the key elements in all three areas as well as in the domain of strategic communication. Some of the participants argued we have been too optimistic and maybe naive how quick the Petersburg objectives could be implemented. Others argued that the lack of political will in the Kasai government was a reason that necessary political and institutional reforms have not led to more trust and confidence in state institutions. Some remarks with regard to the security situation. We all know that the end date for NATO's ISAF mission was a political decision made by heads and states and governments during the NATO-Chicago summit. The transition period to hand over the security responsibility province by province from ISAF to the Afghan National Security Forces went well knowing that the rapid build up of an Afghan National Security Force was not finished by the 31st of December 2014 and that severe capability gaps remain beyond the end date of ISAF which require continued support by the international community. And therefore, no surprise the conflict continues even if ISAF has been ended. In the first eight months of 2015 UNAMA documented the highest level of civilian casualties since it began records. Nikolas Heism the UN Special Representative for Afghanistan concluded in his report to the UN Security Council on 17 September this year and I quote this year's conflict has been one of the most intensive faced by the Afghan National Security Forces. However while they are once again proving their metal and resilience as a number of analysts have observed insurgents have demonstrated the capacity to mess large numbers of fighters in isolated areas. This has challenged the NSF's ability to maintain the ground that they occupy or hold on to it once they have retaken contested sites. We anticipate the intensification of the violence in the country to continue throughout this year. As a consequence of the security situation NATO's Foreign Ministers decided last week in Berlin to sustain the Resolute Support Presence of NATO Allies and Resolute Support Operational Partners followed a unilateral decision of the US Presidents. We talked about it. The mission included its detail configuration will continue to be kept under review and if necessary will be adjusted to the effectiveness. The German government has decided last week to increase the number of personnel in the NATO mission in 2016 instead of reducing as it was pre-planned. I've already mentioned the comprehensive approach as a key topic for a lessons learned process. The lessons from the Balkan interventions in the 1990s have clearly shown that the military and civil assistance to Afghanistan through an intensified coordination and cooperation among all actors was a precondition to achieve the Petersburg codes. Such an integrated approach requires the establishment of mechanisms to ensure unity of effort during both planning and execution phases in managing complex operations. Let me summarize some conclusions we can draw from the Afghanistan engagement with regard to the concept of comprehensive approach. Number one. The 2001 to 2014 intervention of the international community in Afghanistan can be characterized by an imbalance between military and civilian engagements. In the end it was a mixture of bilateral engagements, inconsistent national priorities and weak Afghan capacity that undermined efforts to forge a true comprehensive approach. What could have been an adequate approach in theory turned out to be highly coherent in practice. Number two. The United States and their NATO allies engaged in a series of military interventions in which strategic objectives shifted and approaches involving counterterrorism, counter-insurgency and state strengthening worked at cross purposes. Divergent objectives within and between the military and civilian sectors gave race to command and control problems and intra agency tensions. In addition an imbalance in resourcing military and civilian sectors characterized the intervention as the importance of a comprehensive approach had been recognized while the civilian sector remained fragmented even the military side was not completely successful to fully implement the unity of command. Both nationally and multinationaly there was a substantial lack of both willingness and capability to cooperate and coordinate numerous efforts and initiatives to the actors at play. Number three. Second state is more than ever dependent upon foreign funding. Economic contraction, a fiscal deficit, a reduction in aid and an increasing level of violence are compromising efforts to boost economic growth and trade. And finally number four. In the future more and better integrated approaches are required to plan and to conduct state building operations facilitated by intra agency structures. Identifying what contributed to what and what undermined stability in Afghanistan can therefore only be the first step of a protected learning process for both the nations and the international organizations. Following his first visit to Afghanistan in January 2007 the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates summarized the efforts there as and now I quote significantly hampered not only by muddled and overlaid ambitious objectives but also by confusion in the military command structure confusion on economic and civilian assistance efforts and confusion over how the war was actually going. End of quote. The British former deputy commander of NATO ISAF summed up the courses of incoherence as follows and I quote again no single command of money no addressing need no means of prioritizing and no means of rewarding good behavior and punishing bad. So my summary is there's a lot to learn from Afghanistan let's do it. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. Thank you General Bonaman for the insights and for nearly sticking to the timeline. Mr. Jalali I would like to ask you if you could like said your Afghanistan experiences against what the general has said. Thirty minutes. Eight as usual. Thank you very much pleased to be here. When we talk about less than I think there are so many things that we should not do in the future. So this is there are many things that we should do that many things good things happen in Afghanistan. Society has changed drastically. It is much better country than 11 years ago. But at the same time we could do it with a you know less money and material and also effort. If we had done it through comprehensive approach we would have referred to it. My experience I will share with you my own experience with the transatlantic collaboration in Afghanistan. As a Minister of Interior almost three years I interacted with Germany and United States on police building and as part of security sector reform. I also interacted with ISAF and stability operations during this period. And as chairman of the PRT steering committee during that years I interacted with multinational PRTs. So what I am sharing with you is my own personal experience. However when we talk about what we learn from Afghanistan we have to realize that the situation would be different in different countries. You have to look at the context what kind of a context you are dealing with in Afghanistan. I think the security and strategic context in Afghanistan was very different from what you faced in Balkans and what you will face in Iraq and other countries. I believe that there were three factors that shaped the political and strategic context in Afghanistan that affected the cooperation of donor countries and particularly the United States of America. First it was a tough environment. Afghanistan was at war for 30 years, the state institutions were destroyed, economy was destroyed, Afghanistan was the poor country to start with. At the same time the many factions were supported from outside were fighting each other power. So it was tough the the violence with little resources, poor infrastructure in a rough and landlocked geography, the situation fueled ethno-regional competition for power in resource distribution once international community intervened in Afghanistan. Second one was the nature of international community intervention. It was an accidental war. Had that non-eleven attack the tragic terrorist attack in the United States had not taken place it was hardly imaginable that the United States would have intervened in Afghanistan or other countries. So it was initially to punish those who committed the crimes in the United States with no plans, with no strategy for what would happen. We know when all staff colleges will teach that. When you go to war you have to plan with the same details for the post-conflict post-military situation. If you do not do that you cannot do it after the phase is over. So from the time that the decision was made to intervene in Afghanistan in Washington which everybody thought it would be and until the first year strike landed in Afghanistan it was only three weeks, not even a month. And by early November even there was no idea what is going to happen after the removal of Taliban and then there was a rush to put together something. So it was that so therefore the context was different from that. At the same time in order to avoid a heavy footprint the empowerment of one side of civil war while the other side was removed from power but not neither defeated nor reconciled. So one side of the civil war was taken into alliance while the other side was removed but not defeated so they crossed the border and waited for the time to come back. And nation building was not a priority neither in the United States and then there was a lack of local ownership. Afghanistan had nothing to do with the security operations with the implementation or use of the money most of the money that came from outside neither the priorities for the constructions which was in some cases implemented. And then the available resources one can now look back the amount of money that the United States invested in Afghanistan surpasses the funds that was invested in the Marshall Plan by the end of 2014 but it is how did it work used how efficiently it was used that's the example. On the other hand the situation was relatively stable and there was enough time there was no enough resources. When enough resources were invested there was no time and not the situation so it was back loaded investment not front loaded investment. Yes front loaded investment sometimes difficult because the local capacity is limited not absorb it but front loaded in that kind of situation really pays off in the long run. So therefore I we have to put all this what happened in the past 14 years in this kind of a security entity context it was an expensive what? Afghanistan landlocked country you had to go to other country it was also now the security reform I think security reform did a great job if you compare the security institution of Afghanistan in 2002 in 2003 today you see that the difference it's a major difference if in 2002 there was a vacuum factions were fighting each other but today with some kind of international support Afghan national defense and security forces or the one who are fighting the war yes they suffer they suffer casualties but they have not allowed the Taliban to take over major cities or retain it after they take it so this is the difference but we could do better it was a positive burden sharing between different countries however the lead nation project was stoof piping interconnected pillars police was supported by Germany and army by the United States they came with different levels of commitment different levels of resources different procedures different priorities which hindered coordination that's why it was uneven development I was in 2003 my major problem was when police arrest a criminal I was not sure that it will be tried by a court system which was not developed by an attorney general office which was very corrupt so these two sectors were not developed evenly so that they can cooperate it was stoof piping insufficient donors investment in initial stages the United States invested a lot in the army but not many other nations did the same thing Germany invested for long term police training which would take years in the first three years I think the German investment was not more than 70 million euros so it was the then the focus was on forced generation and less attention on institution building yes battalion after battalion was created for the army police units were created however the Ministry of Defense Ministry of Interior was not because it started very long well if I have one minute I will miss all of the things that I have here so make it two okay with the let me go to the the German role I talked about the US role in the army training in army development the German as the godfather of the Afghan national police which started in 1960s they developed police as a civilian police that was in arm of the rule of law Germany started the same program in Afghanistan but the situation was such that you needed very quick development of police force in that that's when INL the State Department complimented that program they trained short term they funded short term police training in seven training centers one in Kabul in six in other regions it was one week to three training was it sufficient no but it was requirement of this police was trained to fight the not the police to be the arm of that created problems in the future that we have well I think later on in the 2009 more comprehensive approach was taken by the United States and also European police program which at the same time police was trained as a security force fighting counter insurgency at the same time other aspects of police to help the establishment of the rule of law was developed now with PRTs briefly with PRTs with PRTs three years I think initially the Monday was to establish extend the authority of central government to ISAF impact without ISAF and the same time to facilitate security development local forces and third to facilitate economic reconstruction this thing happened my own experience I think without PRT in Gardez in 2003 I would not have been able to streamline the situation remove the corrupt governor corrupt police chief and corrupt division chief PRT was a small group of American soldiers and civilians actually was the tip of the ice of international presence that was the awe that actually established that it was really ISAF impact without ISAF later on in the end of 2003 I had to stop fighting with two factions which supposedly was part of the Afghan national security forces one army corps was under command of a faction leader Mr. Ata the other one was under influence of Mr. Dostoe and they were fighting in the north and I had to stop that contend the heavy weapons tanks and artillery others and that operation also the PRT in Mazari Sharif was the major help to me that way but later on we the PRT expanded many countries for different reasons came and many countries signed up for peacekeeping there was no peace to keep so therefore I think these national caveats came that's why I developed a kind of I borrowed an iron from Coca-Cola company I called the PRT light PRT classic and there were many PRT lights and some PRTs only added one flag to ISAF some people some PRTs force protection was more than implementing the mandate believe me in several occasions instead of helping us to extend the authority of the central government and go after thugs drug traffickers they wanted to kind of pax narcotica so just to appease people not to bother them I'm not going to give you other examples so therefore I think when you go there's a PRT you know what you're signing up for later on of course ISAF became the fighting force the mandate was changed so if you are talking about the lesson learned I think we have to look at it what was the achievement in what were the setbacks how the achievements undermined how the achievement reduces the negative impact of setbacks into what extent setbacks undermines the positive points of achievements Kandahar highway was major achievement it cut the road that they mean travel time that I did from 17 between 17 and 22 hours to 5 hours but later on because of the security problems people do not take that road they fly so the other thing is that the the conflict post-conflict I think you have to have a post-conflict in order to have a conflict strategy and you have a strategy for that and that depends do you have these institutions for that NATO of the past is different if NATO today wants to be a kind of involved in stability operations new NATO it had to develop that institutions that they can do a better job in post-conflict in the post-military phase a favor of space should be created in the immediate of the post-conflict to develop indigenous institutions without that what happened in Afghanistan fighting terrorism in building democracy came you fought terrorism by factions militias that do not believe in democracy and you build democracy which was influenced by the same people who did not believe that and it became influenced by power brokers the faction leaders and others the fighting terrorism in you should not ignore abuses by allied militias who are helping you encounter terrorism but in the long term they by itself become a factor of instability post-military stability operation it is institutional support in means should be planned prior to the intervention details is planning for the military phase yes I know that at the end of it you will have plenty of time during the discussion so I'm not talking about contradictions that I can list them later on where I took only I think nine minutes thank you very much Ambassador James Dobbins I would like to hand over the floor to you could you maybe you could give us some insights about how like lessons learned during the mission have been incorporated in new approaches and new strategies under the Obama government you might be able to talk about that thank you I was initially involved in Afghanistan in the weeks after 9-11 and I found that Germany was also active at that time I was very pleased that the German government offered to host the conference of Afghan opposition figures in Bonn I was familiar with Bonn I served there as Deputy Chief of Mission for four years in the late 80s and in fact I could see my old house from the Petersburg Conference Center I was also very familiar with the Petersburg Conference Center because two years earlier I had joined my other G8 colleagues in negotiating the Security Council resolution that brought an end to the Kosovo conflict German Foreign Minister Fischer played an active role at Bonn pushing the Afghan opposition factions toward agreement Chancellor Schroeder agreed to close the meeting and that became an important action-forcing event which ultimately helped produce the agreement that led to the formation of the Karzai government In the weeks following the Bonn Conference Germany stepped forward and agreed to take the lead in rebuilding an Afghan police establishment the United States at the same time indicated its willingness to take the lead in rebuilding an Afghan army our efforts in that regard over the next year or two were entirely inadequate that's true for the United States that was for Germany and one of the reasons was that we ignored our own recent experience in Bosnia and in Kosovo in Bosnia we deployed 60,000 NATO troops to keep the peace in a society of three million people we provided economic assistance at the rate of $800 per Bosnian per year for the first five years in Kosovo we deployed a NATO force of 50,000 troops in Afghanistan we deployed a peacekeeping force of 5,000 troops why on earth did we think that 5,000 troops would be adequate to keep the peace in a society of 30 million people that had no army and no police force we provided economic assistance to Kosovo at a level of $50 per person per year as opposed to $800 per person per year in Bosnia the economic effort on a per capita basis in Bosnia was 16 times bigger than it was in Afghanistan the military effort was 50 times bigger so not surprisingly Bosnia progressed toward a reasonably peaceful society much more quickly now there was a rationale to this Donald Rumsfeld the Secretary of Defense argued that by flooding Bosnia and Kosovo with military manpower and economic assistance the United States and its allies had turned those two societies into permanent wards of the international community and we were going to avoid that in Afghanistan and subsequently in Iraq by absolutely minimizing the amount of resources that we applied to the grounds that this would make those societies more self-sufficient more quickly this turned out to be an entirely fallacious strategy the idea of reinforcing only under failure of adding troops and money only after your initial commitments had been shown to be inadequate turned out to be a far more expensive way of approaching these kinds of problems I came back to Afghanistan in 2013 again as the American Special Envoy and I found that Germany again was occupying an important place in the international efforts it was Germany back in 2003 that insisted that ISAF made a NATO command previously for reasons that are difficult to conceive at this stage the American administration had refused to link ISAF to the UN to NATO or even to the United States it was a completely freestanding command that was limited to the Afghan to the Kabul city limits so it was Germany when it assumed command of ISAF that insisted that it be made a NATO command and subsequently its mandate was expanded to the country as a whole I also found when I came back in 2013 that Germany had become our most enduring ally of the major allies in Afghanistan long after our other major allies had dropped out of the mission continuing to provide the pole of NATO presence of which around which it does and other NATO allies were able to assemble in northern Germany and Germany was also charged with maintaining the broad international consensus in support of our overall efforts in Afghanistan I think the German government was disappointed with the decision that President Obama announced in 2014 to withdraw American military presence entirely by the end of 2016 the German government quietly made it known that it was prepared to stay if the United States was prepared to stay beyond that point and I'm pleased to say that more recently President Obama has reversed that decision and indicated that the United States will stay and I think the German government's position in that regard was helpful in moving him to that decision in terms of some of the lessons that we've learned I'm not sure I agree entirely with General Bornerman I know that there's a feeling on the part of American and NATO military that their efforts were expansive and substantial and the civilian efforts were inadequate and that there was an imbalance there I'm not sure that the results actually bear that out if you look at Afghanistan's social and economic development over the last decade you find that it is astounding that you've had a GDP growth that was comparable to China for the decade following the intervention you had a significant increase in longevity possibly the greatest increase in longevity over a 10 year period that any country has ever experienced you had a doubling of literacy in the country and if the children that are in school now stay in school that literacy will have doubled again it will have redoubled a decade from now UNDP measures the economic and social development of every country in the world every year puts out an index and between 2002 and 2012 Afghanistan had a greater progress across the social health education and standard of living than any other country in the world so by these measures there was substantial progress now there were this progress wasn't evenly spread and and and I think that there was a failure early on and which continues to dog us today a failure to put adequate resources in building a governance capacity in building the institutions we lagged in that regard and there's still weaknesses there that are a significant obstacle nevertheless the idea that that the economic and social programs that the international community put in effect were inadequate I think is simply not substantiated by the figures that the World Bank, the IMF the UNDP Freedom House others that measure progress across democratization, social and economic indicators would substantiate the main problem in Afghanistan is that while we've largely succeeded across the spectrum of economic and social objectives we failed in our central purpose which was to leave behind the society that was at peace with itself and its neighbors after all neither the UN nor NATO nor the United States sends troops to foreign countries in order to make them prosperous nor do we intervene in order to make authoritarian governments democratic we do intervene the UN, NATO, the United States sometimes to make violent countries peaceful and we haven't succeeded in that regard in Afghanistan and I think we have to acknowledge that after 15 years we haven't achieved our central purpose and I believe that the reason we haven't is because of the several years during which we provided an opportunity for the opposition which was noted was ejected but not defeated or reconciled to reorganize to train, to recruit and to begin to penetrate and to and to push back into Afghanistan and to create a very substantial insurgency we also failed to understand that Pakistan was continuing to regard the Afghan Taliban as an instrument of Pakistani policy and it took us nearly a decade to spot and accurately and accurately assess Pakistan's motives and intentions in that regard and I think this was the other signal failure of our early efforts. A final failure was the failure to pursue reconciliation back in 2002 when there was a real opportunity when many leading Taliban figures were prepared to surrender, a few of them did what did we do, we sent them to Guantanamo or to Bagram prison and kept them there for years thereby discouraging the reconciliation of many others including at one point potentially Muammar prepared to come over and operate under the new rules that had been established at the Bonn conference. So there were some very substantial early failures that I think continue to explain the difference between what we achieved in Bosnia and Kosovo which are not perfect societies, they're still the most corrupt societies in the Balkans, they're still the poorest societies in the Balkans but they are at peace and that's why we went there and that's why we went to Afghanistan and it's not at peace. Thank you very much Jim Dobbins I would like to give the floor to John F. Sopko you might have to add some insights on how the international assistance for Afghanistan has been handled and how that has also led to administrative capabilities on the side of the Afghan state. Thank you very much and it is a pleasure to be here and I first came to Washington back in 1982 as a young prosecutor working for Senator Sam Nunn who at that time was chairman of the armed services committee and I realized from then to now the strong working relationship on national security issues between Germany and the United States and also the strong history of sharing lessons from both countries as to how to improve our approach to national security, redevelopment or what's going on hopefully in Afghanistan. I'm also going to say something which is very rare for an inspector general to say I'm going to admit that I have a conflict of interest and rarely do inspectors general admit anything particularly conflicts of interest and the conflict of interest goes back to somebody made a reference to General von Steuben as you all know he is not only the first German general to oversee and to manage U.S. troops during the war he is the first inspector general in the United States so that legacy of teaching America lessons from their experience is something that I personally have benefited from as an inspector general appointed in 2012 by Senator Obama. Our involvement I think in Afghanistan is an example of that cooperation and how we can also learn from our experiences both of our experiences in the 14 years we've been there. I want to read from a document about some of those lessons because I think they will resonate today with many of you and I think it may spark some interest in some discussion and I quote the U.S. assistance program was over ambitious both as to scale and to timing in many ways the program was larger and could be effectively administered by either the United States or the Afghan governments to quote again for both governments it was difficult to recruit appropriately qualified staff unquote again also U.S. expectations were generally unrealistic in particular there was a tendency to terminate technical assistance in institutional development projects far too soon well before they had firmly rooted again the U.S. generally had too much confidence in the applicability of technical solutions to complex social and economic problems in Afghanistan quote more time for field review and less intensive Washington or headquarters review would have a sound practice for the future I should say would be a sound practice for the future the report goes on to note nor were Afghan officials reliable informants in many cases of the cultural attitudes and concerns of the local people who were regarded by all as passive objects of development rather than as participants or partners in the process and report goes on to say ignoring these principal principles were to prove particularly costly in helmet province unquote I'm sure none of you panelists and audience alike are surprised by these observations or lessons I have heard variations of them from a wide variety of individuals and institutions and organizations many of you in the room today have told me these things last three and a half years my organization has found similar complaints similar observations what is surprising I think to all of us will be that cigar is not the author of that report I quoted nor is the general accounting office or the state department inspector general or aid inspector general nor was that report written in this decade or the last two decades it was a lessons learn report prepared for USAID in 1988 examining the US government's experience in Afghanistan from 1950 to 1979 when I first discovered this report and I know many of you have read it but when I first discovered it I knew USAID in Afghanistan I took it to the embassy in Afghanistan and I could find no one who had ever heard of it or read it now this is not meant as a criticism of aid or the state department or embassy or our officials or hard working officials in Afghanistan what I think it is is a cautionary tale for all of us of the difficulty not only of collecting information and making certain it is accurate and insightful but the more difficult effort is alluded to by the earlier speakers of incorporating those lessons observed into doctrine training and implementation now some of you in a room with military backgrounds are more attuned to lessons learned and lessons observed in how that gets put into doctrine and how it is then spit out into the training manuals and performance reviews of officers and enlisted men but that culture is an anathema or at least foreign to the civilian side of the house and this may have been what the general was alluding to is that is the disconnect because the military has that culture and has the funding in place to institute that training unfortunately civilian agencies don't have that luxury my focus my agency's focus on the issue of lessons learned has come to the conclusion that the problem is really not observing or identifying rather it is actually implementing those lessons and I think we can all agree to it and I'm glad we're having this conference because I think this is an opportunity to talk about how do we get this implemented not only in the civilian agencies but also in the legislative side of the house our parliaments and our congresses play an important role in carrying out and implementing policy and programs not only for the continuation in Afghanistan but in the future wherever that may be where we do something like this again and we all know we will you could probably name five to ten countries right now where this possibility exists in the most conflict world of us coming in not only with the military but also with a very robust reconstruction now the good news is it can be done our military has worked on implementing lessons learnable mostly it is on a tactical less on a strategic point of view but there have been great successes in that area likewise I've seen questions with our German colleagues where they have done some lessons learned and implemented I think a clear example and I'm not going to cite too many of them because I know we have a limited amount of time in 2010 the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development did a lessons learn program and did a report called Assessing the Impact of Development Cooperation in Northeast Afghanistan 2005 to 2009 short title findings and it's a very good report and I highly recommend everyone to read that one of the key findings was development is not going to work in an insecure environment I mean it's simple but made sense and the Germans then have implemented programs following that lessons learned so there is an example of where you can see how it's implemented but I think another key point I want to make and then I will because I think it's the questioning where I think we can develop a lot of these issues and I don't want to rattle on about you can read our reports where we find all of the problems we've seen that's my job to find a problem my job also is to find some success stories so I really would like to see some of those because we are also required by statute by our Congress to issue a series of recommendations and on how to improve things as we go forward and I actually had a wonderful conversation with General John Allen the former head of ISAF who I know Ambassador Cunningham worked closely with him and many of you worked closely with him and he took me aside on a breakfast and said you know John the Marines will do their lessons learned the Army will do their lessons learned even the Air Force will do some lessons learned it's inside if you're in the military if we're lucky there may be some purple lessons learned by that I mean the Joint Chiefs may do some lessons learned among all of the U.S. branches he asked me pointedly said but the next time we have a PRT it will be state, aid and the military being there and oh by the way the Germans or the French the Russians or whomever will also be there who is doing the whole of government and the whole of governments lessons learned he then gave me the challenge he said I looked at your statute you're the only agency in the U.S. government who's empowered to do the whole of government approach and he actually embarrassed me because we had not been thinking about that so last year we set up a lessons learned program and it's run by a colleague of yours, a former colleague Scott Warden who's in the room I'm going to identify him who's worked closely with USIP Paul Fischnein who is going to be on one of the panels this afternoon is actually one of the experts we've brought in experts we've talked to and we are working on talking to experts both in and out of the government and outside the United States to try to collect best practices success stories this isn't the normal audit function of an IG this isn't the normal investigative function what this is is an opportunity for us to collect what works and I'm very proud to announce that after meeting with your ambassador in Afghanistan as well as other European and coalition ambassadors and we discussed every time I go to Afghanistan I always meet with as many people as I can and obviously the coalition ambassadors we thought it would be a good idea and USIP has graciously agreed to co-host this with us to bring in representatives from all of the coalition countries to hear their best practices and I think this is a wonderful opportunity and I hope you will go back to your governments you will maybe participate and hopefully you will learn from that experience this is part of this lessons learned approach and I also think it's a wonderful opportunity for USIP to house and to be the receiver of all of this information on lessons learned because as many of you may not know we are a temporary agency we will go out of existence to the great applause of many in the government but also it should be we're a temporary agency when the amount of funding falls below $250 million for reconstruction we should go out of existence but USIP is a sustaining institution and I think this would be great and I'm not I'm giving you an unfunded mandate of looking over at Andrew but I think it's a wonderful opportunity because of your mission to and you've already started and I know we've worked closely we actually had one sort of best practices on remote monitoring conference here which unfortunately we had a snowstorm I know I got shut down too but anyway so I just want to end with that and I look forward to your question thank you very much John Sobko final remarks Phillip Ackerman who can of course should elaborate all his views in eight minutes but sitting so far away from me that I'm hardly able to implement that rule Mr Ackerman please the German view thank you very much I'd like to shift a bit your attention from the fact whether Afghanistan was a success so far or not and go on what we in Germany love to call the meta level on a level higher up because I think that this Afghanistan intervention has somehow changed the character of all international intervention since then and it certainly has changed my country's approach to interventions and I'd like to sort of characterize three levels of lessons learned or lessons to be learned in this theoretical approach to how Afghanistan mission was set up and implemented first of all we should not forget that somehow as a first in world history Afghanistan was much more than only a NATO or western mission it was a very very comprehensive mission we had basically in 2001 the whole world stood aside and everybody was very much against al-Qaeda and for very many other reasons including the immediate neighborhood people started engaging in Afghanistan was the civilian head of the PRT the German PRT in Kunduz we had Iranians starring the roads of Talukan the capital of the province of Tahr and we had Bangladeshis sitting in Kunduz three poor Bangladeshis suffering from the Kunduz winter trying to set up a microcredit institution so we had India we had Pakistan we had very many other players outside NATO and theoretically this is of course a great thing with the strong UN backing everybody was very much committed practically it was a disaster frankly because there was chaos in Afghanistan and I'd like to give you two or three little examples to show how difficult it was to coordinate or to get sort of a common line and I started with the German US comparison and Ali Jalal just mentioned it when I was in Kunduz we had a Dinkor facility a contractor from the US government working about a kilometer from our PRT training police force in about two and a half to three weeks whereas our police agents coming with a long history of street credibility coming from Frankfurt or Munich or sitting in the PRT tried to work slowly slowly with the police on the ground in their various field of expertise so when they heard about Dinkor they turned their backs to them the German guys because they fainted this is not police training this is absolutely unacceptable well I'm not judging which one was better but you see in parallel these two police training approaches existed we tried to work together with countries like Japan or India or UAE in setting up projects for example Madrasas and it turned out to be terribly difficult because every country every development agency had its own approach to things and we managed with the UAE we didn't manage with India Japan was very difficult even within the EU let me give you this example we had fundamental differences in approach our colleagues from the development and cooperation ministry would refuse to give money to the budget as budget aids to Afghanistan with as I think good reasons the Brits and the Swedes made a point of giving only money to the budget of Afghanistan so they made a point to say that this is our approach is that we have to support the treasury of Afghanistan so we give the money to them directly which was fundamentally different from our approach so I think everybody in the first 6-7 years looked a bit desperate because we saw that very many activities happened at the same time and nobody oversaw them, nobody coordinated them so of course everybody this is the moment where the world looks at the UN and blames them for failing which they did basically they didn't do anything but it's not their fault in a way because people wouldn't let themselves coordinated or be coordinated so the UN in Kabul tried a bit, they tried even in the provinces but they didn't succeed in getting people together a lesson which we have to draw from this is how to coordinate such an international crowd better I think so far no solution has been found second level is the in Afghanistan the cooperation between military and civilians and this is something where Jan Bormann said the word imbalance, I think this is exactly what happened you have a very well organized and structured very hierarchical organization in Kabul with tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians working for them in a total and structured way at the same time you have 100 little development agencies or civilians floating around and doing their own business what happened was that the generals the chiefs of ISAF in Kabul drew more and more competences towards themselves because they felt the others were not satisfactory as they did on the ground it was not coordinated it was not clear I'll give you one example Germany was very much engaged in project rule of law cooperation as well as foreign office so I had a German high ranking general saying you do nothing on the rule of law and I said no, we do a lot you might not see it it's not such a structure like ISAF is and I tried and he said this is nothing because it's useless I think ISAF should take care of the rule of law and what happened was under some generals in Kabul I think with all caution I say that there were always traces of hubris when it comes to ISAF headquarters in Kabul they set up an office in ISAF for the rule of law and prosecutor training I think, frankly, this was not their job and they shouldn't have done and this is the imbalance between the strong and overwhelmingly present military and development was not resolved and this imbalance is partly because of the lack of coordination when it comes to the civilian world but partly also because the military they were so strong and they have this very sleeves up hands-on mentality that they feel that they were probably for everything at the end of the day a big mistake in Afghanistan and I think we should figure out in other interventions how to resolve that somebody mentioned General Allen this was the last ISAF commander I worked with and I must say he was the one who really understood the limits of the military engagement he was really very clearly said that this is not my General Petraeus always talked about my diplomatic wingman I refer to the civilians and I think General Allen had a different approach and that was a sort of a more and more convincing one now the third level and this is something which I hope you don't get bored with but this is an inner German level which is very important Germany I think it's fair to say that has grown up during this Afghanistan mission when I started dealing with Afghanistan you must imagine that four strong ministries in Germany we have the coalition government ministries unlike in the US are very very strong the ministers have a big weight in the cabinet they were sort of sitting together reluctantly grudgingly trying to figure out something when I came to Kunduz the minister of cooperation and development I would say had almost a physical aversion to talk to military because they felt that this is not something to talk to. They came from an old fashion, I don't know the development approach that prevailed through the 20th century after the war and it was a very very difficult step to take our ministry of interior overseeing the police had a very very difficult time to adapt to foreign office ways of dealing with things they were very very clumsy in many ways and this was led to also a shortage of success I would say it led to certain failure that these ministries didn't come together and I'm happy to say and this is something which I think shows that this Afghanistan adventure has led at least to something in Germany during my tenure as head of the task force we sat together with all the foreign ministry and we had really a lesson I'm happy to see Stefan Oswald sitting here he used to be my colleague and counterpart from the ministry of cooperation I think we all sat down with the ministry of defense ministry of interior ministry of cooperation development and foreign office and try to figure out how to do better together and I think we did actually which resulted in quite a success. Let me say that I think Afghanistan is the area where transatlantic relations, the German-U.S. relations worked the best. It's no other field of cooperation which was better and deeper and more sound than in this Afghanistan area. I had in my team three American diplomats and I know that SRAP here has always I think we have a German colleague here who is now working in the State Department in the SRAP context which is very important and very, very useful it's a great way of improving working relations on every level military as well as civilians and when I ask one of these diplomats what he liked after he completed his tenure in my team and asked an American colleague what he liked best about Germany he said your interagency process is just fabulous and that's not something we believe easily actually because we felt that it was not so good but if American says it's fabulous I think it should be quite okay. Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Ackermann. It's a positive note actually that after the frictions that we have seen in 2007-2008 especially Germany and America about what to do in Afghanistan between strategies of state building and counter insurgencies and all the misconceptions of what the other side really wanted to hear that this has been sorted out in this positive way is rather promising. I will not go into questions on the panel because we have 50 minutes roughly for question and answer from the board. I would like you to actually say who you are and direct the questions to the panelists directly that not all of them have to answer all questions. I see Dominic Willis over here, Vanessa over here, four, five people now I have to make a list. Dominic. That would be wonderful. Thank you Henning. Thank you to all the esteemed panelists. My name is Captain Dominic Willis. I have brought some on the Resol support mission and I actually just came in from Masay Shalif but my question is another note and also my political and my personal view we have talked a lot about the problems and the experiences I think for Germany lessons learned especially in the military guard are very, very high first offensive operations for the German Army since 1945 but I think we haven't at all talked about the elephant in the room and that's the domestic policy and public fatigue and I think in the end all the funds and the troops allocated come from domestic policy and that's the reason why we have now Resolute Support and my opinion on Resolute Support and its effectiveness is quite mixed so I think domestic policy is the question that I have to you. How can we be more effective and more positive and explaining the necessity for such missions abroad? Thank you. So there's the microphone. Thank you. I'm with the German Atlantic Society and I have two questions I am looking for a volunteer on the panel who can explain to me the role of Pakistan in all this so who would be the volunteer here to enlighten me there and then last week Afghan President Ghani was in Berlin and Chancellor Merkel told him that we cannot accept Afghan refugees and record numbers anymore they just keep coming and the reason for that is she said that Afghanistan has enough safe areas where these people could stay, survive or whatever and the question to the panel is are there enough safe areas so that the Germans rightfully can say stay at home. Okay, thank you. Over there. My question is to Ambassador James Dobbins you talked about understanding failure of understanding of position of Pakistan regarding Afghanistan and also failure of reconciliation with Taliban or defeating them after 14 years we still do not see any change on both of these issues so what do you recommend for them? Could you introduce yourself? I work for a local governance department currently I am at Georgetown University Thank you. There was one in the back one up here and so three more on this side I think we Thank you. My name is Mary Togstof I have a, what I heard of many of you is that there is this kind of imbalance between military and civilian components and the whole mission I'm kind of wondering why he said the military is such a well-structured organization which is easier to use but then, yeah I would like to know a little bit more about how there must be some kind of frustration with the parliament and the governments because they never really took care of the right balance how do you see that like would it have made more sense to kind of strike a better balance much earlier than nowadays Thank you. Hello I'm Bill Goodfellow at the Center for International Policy and the former co-chair of the Afghanistan study group. My question is there has been no mention at all this morning of negotiations and negotiated settlement and I've been following Afghanistan for quite a few years. It's clear to me that we aren't winning, that the West is losing and the time is not on our side and Ambassador Dobbins said earlier we missed an opportunity in 2003 to incorporate the tower and I think that ultimately would end with a negotiated political settlement and that should be certainly cars I understood that and President Ghani understands that but I'm not so sure that there are supporters in the United States and particularly the military understands that so I would like to hear some discussion of how you get to a negotiated political settlement because I think that's the only way this will end. Violet? Thank you very much. My question on the parliament is you believe we're working Transatlantic Cooperation on China. Philip you mentioned that the Transatlantic Cooperation was the best in Afghanistan and in terms of what you also talked about cold government's kind of lessons learned. So I was wondering the lessons learned if you could see a spillover effect to other areas beyond Afghanistan as you mentioned the complex situation, the comprehensive approaches that are required and we have a lot of those kind of very mixed challenges in the Middle East with ISIS but also in Asia ahead. So I wanted to ask you if you could see that comprehensive approach cooperation spilling over to other areas where both sides could work together. Thank you. Thank you. I will take in two more and then give back to the panel. One is there in the back and the other is Mr. Geesman here. So much of the panel has been directed at the formative first few years first say half dozen years of our involvement. But I was surprised that in that context no one had mentioned our involvement in Iraq. So my question is given the build up to Iraq ideologically as well as other kinds of preparation and the operation itself how in your estimate members of the panel how did our involvement with Iraq deep involvement with Iraq figure in many of the kinds of mistakes I think particularly here in terms of force structure and commitment in non-military ways as well. Thank you. Thank you. Professor Geesman up here. I'm Michael Geesman. I'm also here with the General Atlantic Association but my primary occupation is being the director of the Baku Foundation in Berlin. I do not know whether it's fair to address the question to the panel that relates to what Ambassador Canningham said before but he said quite openly that the Taliban must understand that there is no way for them to succeed and the question that I have is how monolithic is the Taliban movement as such assessed by the panelists because what I see there is an emerging debate within the Taliban movement that may lead to a struggle also over a strategic shift with the Afghan government. So is it appropriate then to exclude them per se from any inclusive political settlement or is it worthwhile to undertake an effort to engage those who are interested in entering into negotiations and who of course represent as we know a lot of voices within the country. So thank you very much. We had a number of questions about domestic decision making, the domestic fatigue about also selling the news about the balance of civil military operations to the parliaments and those who decide domestically. We had questions about Pakistan and about the role of the refugee crisis in the relationship to Afghanistan. We had a number of questions on the future of the reconciliation process which I find interesting because we might have not put that in as lessons learned enough that we did not succeed in that. We had of course the question to Iraq. I would not have to ask this as a German because it would have sounded a bit like pouring salt into a wound. I would like to in the order that we had before because starting with General Bornerman because he all had waited to participate in that discussion. Thank you very much. I will only concentrate on one issue and this is the question of the Sif-Mill relationship and what is the spillover possibly for future other operations. I think one of the reasons and you remember that I said in my initial remarks that I do not belong to the camp who is saying everything is bad in Afghanistan. We have those people in the United States but we also have those people in Germany. I'm not part of this group. A lot of things have been achieved but on the other hand we cannot say that Afghanistan is good enough. Therefore we have to look into the question what went wrong and when I was talking about imbalance between Sif-Mill achievements I always remember myself on the situation in the North Atlantic Council. We received nearly every week a briefing on the situation in Afghanistan and the briefing was prepared on the three strategic goals coming from Petersburg. Security, good governance and development and the results of the briefing was always traffic lights which is green, which is yellow which is red and from week to week it was always the same picture. On the security issue they reported about success coming to more or less yellow colors. On the government issue it was always red, permanently red and on the development issue from region to region different from red to green. After six months they stopped this presentation because it gave the impression there is nothing going on in this side and only on the security side. So what I want to say is the imbalance has something to do with the fact and Ambassador Ackerman alluded to it that there was a lack of coordination. You can say okay who should be the Mr. Comprehensive Approach in Afghanistan and I have discussed it with a senior representative from the United Nations. He should be the Mr. Comprehensive Approach but when you have asked him why don't you play this role he's saying I'm not supported by it. There was no winningness on the other side to be coordinated and then my last remark is what does it mean for the future what we have to do is to get a common understanding among international organizations as well as with NGOs that we should go into a cooperation even in the early phase of planning of an operation. It does not help if we come to a theater and we realize who is also there. We have to know this in advance and we have to develop mechanisms how can we guarantee that both international organizations and other actors are starting the planning process as much as possible together and therefore we need institutions to dock on NATO needs relations with United Nations organizations and vice versa but also with international organizations like International Red Cross and and and and this is for me the basic lessons learned and I know from my time in Brussels that we have started to develop those coordination mechanisms and we have to see whether they work in the next operation. Thanks. Thank you Mr. Jaldini. The questions on the rule of Pakistan and the political settlement or negotiation are all connected so let me take this failure for reconciliation that Ambassador Dobbins referred to and also the prospects for political settlement. Afghanistan and also its international partners missed two opportunities for an easy political settlement with the Taliban. It was in 2001 in Bonn which Taliban were removed from power but not defeated, no reconciled they did not represent that. Well that's one way at that time the situation was such that Taliban were just labeled the same as Al Qaeda and there was no much interest to include them. On the other hand the Northern Alliance which became the principal allies of the Afghanistan they were reluctant to take them as a partner for reconciliation. The second was in 2003 after 2002 when they had this meeting in Karachi and they sent messages to Afghanistan government to that they are ready to they will start or they are willing to talk to Afghanistan and their demand was political immunity and also to allow them to act as a political party. At that time they sent their missionaries to Kabul they met with me with the midst of defense with prison Karzai and others and we discussed it for two months that what should do with them. They said that if you do that then we can come and discuss this situation. But at that time two issues were discussed. The international partners were not interested particularly at the time that the war in Iraq continued nobody wanted to take very, very drastic decisions in Afghanistan. The second one was our allies in the National Security Council. Some of our partners, some of our colleagues were reluctantly said we can take individuals but not as a movement and that actually was the second opportunity that we missed. In 2012 I was in the track two with the Taliban and Chantier in France they referred to it at that time. However, now it was easy at that time. Now the situation is totally different. You have to shape this environment in order to bring that kind of a situation again to convince them. In order to shape the situation you have to do three things. You have to build your capacity so that force the Taliban that that government Afghanistan can survive they cannot over through it. That's one. Second Pakistan relation between Afghanistan and Pakistan should develop to the extent that Pakistan actually cooperated with that. And third, the Taliban capability should be degraded. In these three things are happening now but the environment is not shaped yet. With Pakistan I think Pakistan is willing to say that stability in Afghanistan is in the interest of Pakistan. But what is the stability defined by the Taliban? I'm coming to this. Therefore, they said it in ten years. They signed the non-interference in 2004. But the stability they are talking about is something that is different than the stability Afghanistan wants. What they want in stability is a kind of an influence of them into all aspects of Afghanistan governments. That's the governance that's intelligence that's the military. And also to exclude India to the extent that they want it. That's the kind of stability they want. Now, I think on the other hand, President Ghani went an extra mile. Many concessions to Pakistan he tried to remove the concerns of Pakistan if they have about India or other nations. But Afghanistan, because of the mistrust between Afghanistan and Pakistan he said first we have to see some positive changes in the attitude. First we have to see a kind of reduction in the level of violence and the end of the we call it undeclared war in Afghanistan. If that happens and we see that there are some positive steps taken then we can go to normal relation between the two. When that happens then we can go to specialized operation that other concerns of you will be addressed. But Pakistan came back they want all in one package. On package which is not acceptable to Afghanistan. Now I don't know the situation is such that I don't know Pakistan has changed that kind of attitude that he had in the past 10 years. They would like some circles in Pakistan would like to see Afghanistan stable under their conditions or unstable that they can manage. Therefore as long as they have this hedging position they will continue to support them. What Afghanistan wanted was that Pakistan the minimum that they can do is to prevent the groups who are based in Pakistan from moving freely, planning freely, talking freely publicly against Afghanistan. Which is something very this is see now when they saw about there were talks that the Taliban will facilitate negotiation with the Taliban and Afghan government next week they said. But we don't know we will see what happens. But talks are not going to make a difference unless Pakistan changes its own position. Whether negotiations with the Taliban as I said three things should happen. Otherwise I don't believe that the situation Afghanistan has changed from today. I think sometimes I hear that Taliban is becoming more assertive probably they will have the capacity to overthrow the Afghan government. I don't think this is going to happen. The situation Afghanistan has deeply changed and I don't think the situation will allow the Taliban to come back. Yes they can come back as part of a government and I think in all political leaders of Afghanistan told Taliban and Russia on that you can have your way. Yes come want to change the constitution but go through the legal process and if people agree with you we will change the constitution but nobody can give you these changes on the battlefield. So I think now the priority is not to you know in this everything in order to ask Pakistan to come to the negotiated the priority is to build the capacity in Afghanistan to sustain the survival of the government. The longer the government survives the less chance the Taliban will have to come back. So therefore three things should happen is to shape the environment similar to those that we had in 2003 Thank you. Mr Ackerman seems to want to leave a bit earlier. I have to leave a little early I'm sorry so if I may very quickly very very briefly Marx an interesting question on what parliaments I think you ask this question what parliaments think about this imbalance the interesting thing which I observed is that in parliaments debate derails somehow there's no problem with the German public sending development workers to Somalia or to the worst parts of the world unarmed you know everybody thinks that's fine when it comes to soldiers people are all of a sudden a bit more concerned and the moment in Germany at least that you involve Bundeswehr in this this overshadows the rest of the operation very clearly so I think this imbalance is perfectly echoed or resonates with the parliament it's not that parliament says oh we should look after the civilians more they say what are our soldiers doing so there's more empathy there's more emotion when it comes to Bundeswehr so I think this debate is reflected in parliament rather than not transatlantic your question transatlantic spillover yes I think in the region I mean you should not forget Afghanistan is a very very hands-on mission you know I mean we are working with Americans so closely because we share so many practical things and we do so many practical things together I think Iran is a good example you know where now with the JCPOA we might open up in the in the region more constructive approach there Pakistan a country that I think Germany has not observed enough America has is coming to the radar screen and is also a good field of German-American cooperation I would say safe areas in Afghanistan yes yeah I think I would be very convinced that they are safe areas 43% of the Afghan asylum seekers get asylum 57 don't and I have worked with these guys who are questioning the Afghan refugees and they are pretty good I must say they know their stuff they are very experienced in Afghanistan the problems we have with Afghan refugees is they come under false pretext very many of them to Germany you know human traffickers tell them they get a house and a Mercedes and roast a chicken a day you know I mean people are that's what they I mean it's very sad pretty you know low educational standard and the human traffickers give me $5,000 I ship you to paradise and I do it now because they close the door very soon so I think urban spaces in Afghanistan Herat, Nangahar, Kabul some provinces in the interior part of the country are very safe there's much more normalcy in Afghanistan than we see in the press we see only the bad parts so I think there is you can not everybody but there is absolutely the possibility to say you are not entitled for asylum and that means that you might go back that doesn't mean that migration labour migration is not an option don't get me wrong here you can pursue studies in Germany but on another title you can't come to Germany say I want asylum and then you are not entitled to asylum so that means thank you very much can I excuse myself then thank you very much for your insights here and good luck with your next appointment Ambassador Dobbins let me address a few of the questions first on the issue of public fatigue and how one deals with it I think the answer is succeed earlier unfortunately the reaction to the frustrations with Iraq and Afghanistan is let's not do this again we see what the ground whereas I think the lesson is exactly the opposite more boots on the ground earlier on would have produced much better results we see what no boots on the ground produces in Libya we see what it's producing in Iraq we see what it's producing in Syria all of those countries are more violent than Afghanistan is today all of those countries are more dangerous than Afghanistan is today and that's the lesson of no boots with public fatigue on safe whether there are safe areas in Afghanistan more people have been killed in Paris than in Kabul this year and Kabul is as big as Paris about five million people in each city and Paris is more dangerous as regards terrorist attacks than Kabul is and Mazar Sharif and Harad are safer than Kabul so yeah there are safe areas on the question about why do we don't negotiate with the Taliban well for a decade the United States effectively blocked negotiations with the Taliban but by 2011 that policy had been reversed the United States did enter direct talks with the Taliban in late 2011 those continued into 2012 I'm sorry in late 2010 and those continued into 2012 and then the Taliban cut them off if you're going to negotiate it takes two to negotiate the Taliban have resolutely refused to negotiate with the United States since early 2012 and they've been had occasional informal discussions with Afghan representatives they've not negotiated in any serious fashion maybe they will be brought to do so but it does take two and for the moment at least both the United States the Afghan government and indeed I think the Chinese government the Pakistani government are urging them to enter into those kind of talks just a question on 2012 would you think that because of the Chicago announcements the calculus changed for the Taliban and that was the reason why they stopped the talks no they stopped the talks and it was Germany that actually brought the two sides initially together and very quietly and played a role there back in 2010 and 11 they backed away because the United States indicated that it couldn't negotiate unless the Karzai government was also participating that it wasn't going to negotiate on behalf of Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to talk to the Karzai government and that was the reason the talks broke off on the effect of Iraq I think Iraq had an effect but not in 2003 in 2003 the Bush government was still in the small footprint low profile minimalist approach to post-conflict reconstruction and it tried to do in Iraq exactly what it did in Afghanistan which has absolutely minimized the military and economic resources committed to post-conflict reconstruction with exactly the same effect that is you also generated a counterinsurgency an insurgency in Iraq as a result of those early initial failures by 2006-2007 the Bush administration had reversed its policy it now realized that more was better and significantly reinforced efforts in Iraq and it simply didn't have the capacity to reinforce in both theaters and so it minimized it continued to minimize the commitment in Afghanistan while it increased it in Iraq so it was really in 2006-2007 where the choice Iraq and Afghanistan was made consciously in Iraq was prioritized I agree largely with what Aliya said on Pakistan Pakistan has regarded from the 1990s and continuously as an asset as an instrument for influence that they can use to project Pakistani influence into Afghanistan now I think they're beginning they've begun in the last few years to recognize that this instrumentality instrumentation of instrumentalization of militancy has had a very negative effect in their own society and they're beginning to understand their differences to their use of these kinds of proxies today I think the Pakistani see let the Taliban less as an instrument to be used to their advantage and more as a potential threat that is they've got a lot of domestic militant groups that are attacking Pakistan the Afghan Taliban are heavily implanted in Pakistan there are still millions of Afghans living in Pakistan and if the Afghan Taliban became an anti-Pakistani force it would just add to their problems and so I think while their initial approach to the Afghan Taliban was one of opportunism now it's one of fear they're just not willing to take it on because they don't want to add to their enemies and that's one of the reasons why they allow it to continue to occupy sanctuaries and provide it with some degree of assistance whether the Taliban is monolithic the Taliban has been more monolithic than most insurgencies it's managed to preserve a degree of coherence which is really quite surprising over the last 15 years 14 years since they were expelled in part because they enjoy a sanctuary where they can organize and direct their efforts in safety that may be beginning to fragment a little bit as a result of Mila Omar's passing as a result of the rise of the Islamic State as an alternative brand and an alternative source of inspiration and also an alternative set of tactics it's a much more violent it's much more violent in its strategy the Taliban has been relatively restrained in its treatment of civilians it's avoided intentionally targeting civilians although of course they continue they would regard government officials and Afghan police not as civilians but as legitimate targets but for pure civilians they've been relatively restrained whereas the Islamic State is not and so that could change the character of the conflict in Afghanistan you have some ulcers there I just wanted to comment on the safe areas in the security situation in Kabul and maybe I misunderstood the ambassador I traveled to Paris and I also traveled to Kabul last time I traveled to Paris I could take a cab from the airport to my hotel to this embassy for the last year I can't travel the mile and a half from the Afghan airport Karzai International to the embassy I have to be helo and it's not just me people may want to kill me as one RSO said you're probably more likely to get killed inside the embassy than outside the embassy because you're an IG but this isn't just for me or my staff this is for everybody it's for the mission it's for foreigners it's not for Afghans I know but I talk to a lot of Afghans who are really terrified I talk to Afghan women who are terrified and a lot of Afghans are getting killed in Kabul a lot more than got killed in the Paris tragedy so it's all relative but I think Afghans are very nervous they're leaving the economy also is horrible so that's another reason why you're leaving Kunduz was an eye-opener Helmut is an eye-opener Kandahar is an eye-opener remember the Kandahar airport that was just attacked yesterday was part of a plan to do economic development General the head of C-Sticka had proposed General Seminite to set up business units at all the major airports to try to attract international investment nobody is going to invest in an airport which is under siege it's a serious situation and I think I used to be able to travel around most cities in Afghanistan when I started two and a half years ago in an unprotected vehicle I can't anymore no US citizen no foreigner can no German except some of the people from GIZ but nobody in the embassy can do that the last time I was with your ambassador in Kabul we were both in flak jackets standing at the airport trying to fly up to Mazur because it wasn't a safe way to get there except by C-130 so I think we risk losing again support of the Americans support from the Afghans when we poo poo the security situation there it's a very serious threat now the other question I wanted to address was this whole situation with military versus civilian there's two aspects to this one is you are always going to have a military presence in a shooting situation so there always will be the military there the military at least in the United States and I can't speak for Germany on your funding it's gotten tremendous funding versus USAID and the State Department USAID and the State Department and again this is my personal opinion it's not the opinion of CIGAR because remember we're doing our lessons learned and I don't want to bias them so Scott close your ears but my personal opinion has been woefully both agencies have been woefully underfunded for years so when you have a situation like this and the Department of Defense shows up with their shiny uniforms and thousands of people and somebody says I need a road built well I got a reserve unit back in Iowa it builds roads I will command them to show up you don't have to worry about union rules which I remember the Germans had some problems with their Bavarian police showing up to do training because they had union rules you don't have union rules when a guy is a buck private he gets ordered to go someplace so that's the other situation where the military will get called out first and it's easier to put them in harm's way right now in Congress and I think some people in our press and some people in Washington think you can do diplomacy at no risk now that's fallacious that is total fallacy and it's almost a reverse and I'm not certain it'd be interesting from the polling data what the ambassador the German ambassador said before he left when he talked about in Germany if a soldier gets killed it's a bigger negative reaction in the press and among the German people than if a civilian gets killed I don't know but I would think the reverse is here we get really upset if a department diplomat gets killed and it's horrible to talk about that but anybody getting killed but then some soldier getting killed and I don't know it's kind of a reverse psychology here I don't know maybe because people volunteer but I'd be curious about that but this whole attitude that we can do diplomacy at no risk is extremely dangerous for any future engagement thank you very much we have about 12 minutes left some very short and pointed questions and remarks and some equally pointed answers Ann-Kathrin and over here we have two people on this side thank you so much my name is Ann-Kathrin Otto I work for the German Ministry of Defense Ambassador Cunningham mentioned as one of the key issues for the success the performance of the Afghan government so I'm wondering what extent at what point is the Afghan government or the Afghan civil society to that matter of fact involved in our lessons learned process how could they be how can we get them in to our lessons learned process and if someone of you can spell out what holding the Afghan government accountable means what are our tools in this regard in this aspect of course I would be very interested in minister Jalalis views on this thank you I'm an Afghan researcher and former beauty for German press agency a quick statement I mean quick comment and a question I think it is up to the countries to decide whether they would like to take more refugees or immigrants but to say that Afghanistan is safe and to say that Jalalabad all places is a safe place or Kabul that on August 8th more than 400 100 people were injured and killed in one bombing and the bombing was targeted local and residential area I think this is something that we should all understand that Afghanistan is not a safe place and they are in Kabul itself it's not about militancies not about Taliban if you have money you have enemies you have kidnappers after you there are tips and there are many more challenges and of course those challenges are equally for foreigners living in that country and also the Afghans on my question we talked a lot about the lesson learned I was just wondering if there are like a few areas that we you know the panelists can pinpoint that these are the areas that we can use those lessons learned because Afghanistan is right now in a different situation challenges are different we cannot have 150,000 forces and billions of dollars committed to Afghanistan again if anything Afghanistan served as a lesson for the world and I think it has destroyed the appetite of the international community the US and the European allies to commit to any other countries and I think Syria and Yemen would be good examples thank you okay thank you there is one question over here since we have only one microphone we go the short way thank you my name is Felix Bianskata I am a lecturer at Saws University of London so I'm coming from an academic perspective I'm not a practitioner I have never been to Afghanistan but what I would be interested to hear about is two things first I haven't heard anyone speaking about the economy and I thought that must be a really important factor in discussing success and rebuilding a society but I'm more interested in hearing something about the recognition of limits of outsiders and the ability to reconstruct and intervene in states so there was a brief mention of hubris but I think there is a general sense still that this is possible that one can succeed and that one can learn and that it is all possible but I think a recognition of one's limits as an outsider, as a western, as a European to go and order other societies and other places that will be interesting to hear about things and then Ambassador Cunningham and the second drawer and then we close the round there will be great just a quick comment on what John Sokko said about having diplomatic activity in a hazardous environment that's entirely correct it's become much more difficult to do that that is because there's an awareness in the diplomatic core and the foreign service that that is the reality that we need to deal with and American diplomats are managing that each day the willingness to run risk in conducting diplomatic activities is really a political problem that exists in our system now it's not a problem with diplomats recognizing that's what we need to do that's what our career is about now thank you right behind you hello I'm getting to go through from the size of our transatlantic relations I would like to follow up to something Ambassador Dawkins said about the differences between Kazabo and Bosnia and the Afghanistan case and you use the metric of per capita economic assistance and the foreign troops per population ratio and I have to admit I see a lot of similarities when I look at those interventions by using a different metric namely when you look at the strategy making process I think we do see a lot of similarities because in all of the cases of interventions there was a tendency an attempt to limit the involvement right at the outset and also in Bosnia and Kazabo there were difficulties in integrating the political the military and the civilian dimensions of the mission so I'm wondering if this is a general problem that you also see to get the strategic assessment at the outset of the mission right and my question then would be how can we make sure that we get the strategy assessment and then the mid involvement when we go through the intervention how do we get right that there is a continuous reassessment process to evaluate whether the strategy is really getting us to the goals that we aspire to achieve thank you thank you very much we have one minute each to give answers and summarize I would like to start with John Sobko now and then just go down the table real quickly the question about how do we get the Afghan's input and lessons learned we're doing that we're reaching out and actually on my trips and my staff's trips we're actually talking to the ministers and we started by talking to the president in our latest quarterly report we actually interviewed and he was very gracious President Ghani to sit down with my head of my research division and actually talk about his views on reconstruction and his view on lessons they have learned so we're going to do a more formal process in that so we can do that secondly about holding Afghans feet to the fire again or conditionality whatever how you want to phrase that President Ghani supports conditionality he said it the first time I met him actually before he was president I had dinner with him and he talked about the need for conditionality and he said you need to hold our feet to the fire it's funny I remember talking to a US ambassador who told me that your job John is to hold the US government's feet to the fire to hold the Afghans feet to the fire and one criticism for a while is that we didn't do that General Semonite who was head of C. Sticker also was interviewed by my staff and he said prior to a year ago C. Sticker which is for those of you don't know it's basically the combined security training command Afghanistan and the guys who are training the military and supplying all of the food and fuel and everything to the Afghan military there's no conditionality so he said that publicly and it was reported in our last quarterly report so we're now starting to do that I think you can do it it's difficult it's easy to just keep pumping the money but I think many countries not only the United States and not only C. Sticker are saying no no no we have to put some conditions on this and the Afghans are willing to do that it's got to be smart conditionality you can't stop giving fuel in the middle of the fighting season but if the Minister of Defense or a Minister of Interior likes a shiny new object like a new headquarters you could withhold that or if a minister wants a new office you hold that and that's what General Seminite if you want to take a look at smart conditionality the quarterly report before this this is the October 1 before we actually interviewed General Seminite and he laid out the whole panoply of using conditionality but he talks about smart conditionality thank you Mr. Jalali there's no doubt that the good government is the prerequisite for winning counterinsurgency award and then in insurgencies you have to actually be on the one side you have a government on the other side the counterinsurgence then you have a large area that both sides are trying to win that's the population whoever wins that large the majority whichever of this minority wins the majority as they're going to prevail in the past many governments defeated themselves in insurgencies rather than insurgents defeating them it is important of course in a partnership I think both partnerships work together in order to bring if international partners are doing their job their part in the domestic government fails to be effective I don't think it will work so partners therefore I think the pressure will come both sides from partners and from the inside government however I was talking about this issue just a few months back with one of the Afghan leaders that what you are doing these tactical solutions are not going to affect long term priorities under month he said we do not have the luxury today to think in long terms we are busy with day to day problems this was good in early years in 2002 2003 we could come up with a vision, long term vision and provided the sufficient resources in order to implement it in a coordinated all stakeholders to move in that direction that did not happen in that time today don't ask us that we think about long term I am busy today with what's happened tonight in what province so I am dealing with this situation today and that's understandable however I think this also tell us that when you have ambitious purposes vision but no means to implement it this happens in a long term I talked about contradiction earlier let me mention here as a conclusion that what we suffered from these contradictions ambition goals and insufficient resources ambition goals but no patience short patience post conflict approach in a growing conflict situation light footprint in heavily chaotic environment building democracy while fighting anti democratic forces in militias supply determined demands tactics let strategy short term interest took precedence over long term goals that is what happened in the early years and we suffer from those mistake failures that ambassadors also mentioned so today if you are asking Afghan government to do miracles it's not possible I think but you have to shape the environment first in order to think in long terms thank you Jim Dobbins first to the question about recognition of limits I think this is important and it's important to recognize that if you are going to measure your progress in a society like Afghanistan you should measure it against regional standards not global standards democratization in Afghanistan you are not going to compare Afghanistan's democracy to that of Germany or the United States but if you compare it to its neighbors Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan Tajikistan, China Iran, Pakistan it's the most healthy democracy in the region it has the best elections it has by far the freest media it has civilian control of the military so you haven't done too badly by regional standards at one point in 2012 Afghanistan had actually had actually surpassed Pakistan in the quality and capacity of its revenue raising it was raising a higher proportion of its GDP as tax revenues than Pakistan was able to do so against regional standards you get I think a better measure of how much you can actually likely achieve on the difficulties of organizing the international community and the planning and strategic foresight I think during the 90s the Clinton administration and NATO as a whole improved from one intervention to the next so the United States had four military interventions in the 90s Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo and NATO had two, Bosnia and Kosovo by the time you got to the fourth of those a lot of the issues of what institution does what what agency has what responsibility who trains the police, who builds roads what is the right mix of military and civilian and at the international level what does NATO do, what does the UN do what does the OSCE do what does UNHCR do those things had largely been worked out and by the time you got to Kosovo it was a smoother operation than say Bosnia and certainly smoother than the earlier two now unfortunately none of those passed over to the next administration in the United States you went back to the it was a chutes and ladders and you were back at the bottom of the learning curve and because NATO wasn't involved in Afghanistan there wasn't any learning curve there either so one of the problems we have and I agree here with John Sofko is a failure to institutionalize these lessons so the Bush administration also the last Bush administration also became much better in the course of its eight years and you see a progression of its capacity to harness the international community apply necessary resources adapt appropriate counter insurgency policies but unless we institutionalize these these will just be eight year chutes and ladders back to the bottom every time you have a change in government particularly when you have a change of party here thank you General Bonaman two very brief remarks at the end I fully agree with Ambassador Dobbins on the question how to institutionalize the comprehensive approach this is a national problem we have to do it in our nations in the inter-agency process but it's also an international multinational process between the different organizations secondary mark on how to involve our Afghan colleagues into the lessons learned process fully share a trans view we have to do this we should do this it's in our common interest to do this I know from NATO that the joint lessons learned center in Lisbon is doing this very extensively with our Afghan colleagues we have done it in Berlin in our congress where we have invited the Afghan embassy to take part and we are doing it here today so I think it's fully understandable that we want to do this together and I hope we can continue in this way thank you very much thank you very much fully aware that there might be people out there eating away our cookies now I will not summarize this in extent but I found it interesting to learn here how in the beginning of the Afghanistan mission there's somewhat imperfect structures and networks of the western partners partners in the military mission and in the donor community could be exploited by structures in Afghanistan how those two somewhat deficient and uncoordinated and incoherent halves of the whole have been actually exacerbating some of the problems that we had in hand so of course there's another reason to learn together also why we should not start something like this again without having the structures or frameworks to coordinate beforehand and some routines to better connect the civil and the military approaches to crisis management I found it somewhat discomforting that this is still not over I thought the civil-military conflict over crisis management should be a thing of the past the one asymmetry is there that the military part is more expensive absolutely clear that there can be no military success long-term without the civilian side to it and then on the other hand there can be no civilian built up in the crisis regions without protection so you can't do this alone and that should have been clear up to now interesting also how difficult it was to figure out the right numbers of players who should be or like Afghan actors who should have been integrated in the build-up of the Afghan state one could argue there have been compromises made with like former warlords and parties in the civil war that were culprits themselves being included in the new structures while others the Taliban and those aiding al-Qaeda being labeled enemies could not be included so that has been there have been a number of decisions or compromises that might have been difficult to understand for the future and of course another topic or question mark is how we actually implement the lessons that we draw here in later the preparation of later crisis management operations especially when we don't do so many of them so the institutions the ministries the militaries but also the civilian agencies they might not have the same people on the ground that have made experience crisis we use when they act in another so this is a problem yet unsolved I think I thank you all for your great insights that you shared with us and I thank you all for hanging on here there's a coffee break and we will have another panel afterwards thank you very much okay well let's start this second panel I'm sure others will trickle in as we go on I'm Scott Smith I'm the director for Afghanistan and Central Asia programs here at USIP and let me just provide a little bit of a context for this panel because it deals with a particular phase of the transition of US German cooperation in Afghanistan and for me that phase began basically at the Lisbon summit of NATO in 2010 in November where 40 heads of state gathered around this large table agreed that this would be the beginning of a process of handing over more and more authority to the Afghan government culminating in this transition year of 2014 that we had last year and I remember very vividly President Sarkozy saying you know at the time in his rather active manner that he had that you know this is not a reduction of support for Afghanistan this is a change in the way we provide support to Afghanistan and I think what we'll try in this panel is a sense of you did that happen how did it happen and was it successful an important point I think to mention is that during that period the man who is now President of Afghanistan was appointed by President Karzai to be the czar to drive that transition process so I'm very happy to have Heela here who will be our first panelist who was an advisor and is now the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Afghan Embassy and this is the moment in which we really want to begin to hear what were the Afghan voices, what were their views how did they feel that they were being consulted and and involved I think this is also a phase at which we should have begun already to internalize the lessons that we had learned from the you know up to then for the first sort of nine years of our involvement and hopefully one of the issues that will come out in our various in the discussion of the panelists will be a sense of had we begun even if it was not in the sort of systematic way that we're trying to do now had we begun to internalize lessons that we had learned through that early part of the intervention I think I will basically begin with that brief introduction the rules as usual are 8 to 10 minutes and as usual I'm sure the rules will be broken but I will make a valiant attempt to hoist the red card if it becomes too egregious but with that Hilo let's start with you Thank you very much Scott for the introduction I'm very glad to be able to be here with you today to join you in these discussions I think this event that you've organized for today comes indeed very timely not only because just last week our President President Rani together with his highly-level delegation has just visited Germany there were a number of future development corporation agreements that were made the partnership was renewed and Chancellor Merkel has very graciously committed or the German government has committed itself to even increase its troop presence in Afghanistan by 15% this comes very shortly after the Afghan government was able to highly welcome the announcement by President Obama that was made to delay the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in order to consolidate the very important gains that we had made together but also to stand by our side at times where we do need this further support to train and assist our forces besides the very practical needs of this renewed partnership and this prolonged support or further support of our allies and friends I think what has to be acknowledged is also a very highly symbolic value of such an announcement looking at cooperation during that long process to draw review that was undertaken between the Afghan government and the U.S. but also of course with the other big partners I think Germany has been very clearly been a major support in this I think the German administration and the defense officials had voiced very clearly and also publicly that they would support further engagement and they would advocate for probably a bit more patience along the way in order to stand by our side and I think this is very much of course seen and acknowledged by the Afghan administration and I think President Mani also liked to point out in the past while it was probably more the U.S. at the beginning of this engagement that probably had to convince its big partners to engage in Afghanistan I don't know if it was necessarily the complete other way around but it was certainly that Germany had a big role in this and had been very clear along the way I think from the Afghan perspective the new government under President Mani and Dr. Abdullah have very clearly shown their willingness and readiness for complete Afghan takeover of responsibilities at the same time they ever since taking office had always voiced the big concerns that we've been having the fact that a particularly difficult year would lie ahead of us this last year by now 2015 but possibly also the coming year and that there is further requirement for support and partnership again we are very appreciative of those recent announcements from partners and this further engagement at the same time we still need a further support what is already proving to become a risk for our forces as the lack of close air support however before those or again before those announcements by our partners were made I think there was a very wide sense of uncertainty in Afghanistan not necessarily so much in the administration of course they were very closely involved in the review and they know what was to be expected I think more in the Afghan wider public so are we going to be alone completely rather soon and rather abrupt or will we have our partners standing with us and I think what might come might be surprising for a few people is the fact that the wider Afghan public does very much recognize and is very much aware that this is a long, long engagement and this is a country that is far away from the US and it's far away also from Europe and that there is massive sacrifices that were made and I think that's something that really has to be has to be pointed out often that it's there's a wide sense, the general Afghan public does welcome this very much you very often have the voices that might speak otherwise and might speak louder or actually get that platform the standard Afghan person might not be heard I think what also gets lost in belated conversations often particularly in the mainstream media which I think power is not to be underestimated is the fact that our forces have made remarkable progress despite despite it all against all odds and also despite the fact that the enemy has surely gained strength in the country and has scaled up the attacks against Afghanistan and also despite the fact that there are new emerging threats that make that all much more difficult and particularly an increased activity of daish in Afghanistan recently ultimately however Afghanistan does not want to have to defend itself forever and cannot it we a security system and forces are essential of course for us however a sustainable process can only be one of dialogue and cooperation and peace of course here I think Afghanistan very much relies on its biggest friends and partners to support it in that peace process there have been setbacks there we remain hopeful however and again are I think very clearly relying on that whatever is in the power of the allies to help us in this and put pressure where pressure belongs I think everybody who's been involved in the Afghan cause by now knows that our official stand point is that peace can only be state to state that has to be peace being made between Afghanistan and our eastern neighbour Pakistan talks with the insurgency can be sustainable only if we have peace with Pakistan just yesterday at the heart of Asia conference President Lani his delegation met with Prime Minister Sharif and other relevant officials what we're hearing so far is positive it's promising we don't give up anyways on peace but yeah we'll go on with this because that's what is the main goal of this administration also to achieve peace in order to do everything else that we actually have to do which is always things get delayed things don't work in the pace also it could have and it should have I'm actually now then also going to the economy of course very closely interlinked with security and stability Afghanistan's economy has been and is still gravely challenged I think that 13 years of reconstruction and development efforts might not have had the impact or the outcome that was expected furthermore also the withdrawal of that many troops has resulted also in the loss of 100,000 jobs for Afghans it has at the same time also removed the purchasing power of 100,000 contractors and other personnel Afghanistan still does import food worth four billion US dollars a year even though we are a completely agriculture based economy we are still one of the poorest countries in the world I was also President Rani recently a description saying that if you would change the poverty line to 2 dollars then you would have 70% of our population living below it there was a World Bank poverty analysis very recently again that very much confirmed this all these years of efforts have unfortunately not really led to the betterment of livelihoods of the poor what has changed though is that the gap between the poor and the rich has increased I think much went wrong I think there were shortcomings on many many sides maybe also okay maybe if I can put away my diplomatic habit and put on my more development practitioner head on for a few minutes I think the previous administration did not observe this massive aid flowing into the country any well I think there was very clearly a mid and long term and short term strategy towards self alliance for Afghans lacking I think that this massive aid flowing into the country was also that was had to be observed by an institution that was between weak and non existent at that time unfortunately also led to massive corruption also massive off budget planning did not help the national budget to become what it has to become it has to become the national instrument for policy making and policy implementation in order to be sustainable in order to work for itself also then my lack of coordination but then comes back also to the weak institutions of course between government entities internally but also with the donors did not necessarily help did not necessarily improve the efficiency also of things of course very important the criminal economy the drug trade trade particularly has had a when it still has a major destructive impact on our illicit economy I think I'm saying this because it is very important to appreciate all of this in order to move forward better in the future and the very last to say that we all know that they have major major progress and achievements made in key sectors together with our partners and also because there was so much support and there was such a big focus that we do still require I think it is very much a matter of how we plan and also again looking at our own side how the government gives that vision to the international partners in order to align their support to us which is so appreciated and needed but in order to know also in what direction that has to go in the end we'll be on our own feet and we'll have to know how we want to get there also with the support I think that the administration under President Rani and Dr. Abdullah are no denial of those shortcomings and they have embarked on a very courageous and enthusiastic reform plan probably don't want to go into too much details also at that point but just to a few examples we are going after corruption on a large scale now if it is the government reviewing the massive contracts that have this potential for embezzlement of large funds this has been and this will be a priority of the government so President Rani and Dr. Abdullah are themselves every week sharing the National Procurement Commission they have already again also I think one has to appreciate against all odds and despite the challenges that we are facing every single day have saved hundreds of millions of dollars through this this will have an impact it already has we are very proud to say that we for the first time are meeting our revenue targets mostly through an increased customs collection a better customs collection what the government is doing also for the economic development a bit more on the wider scale I think binding particularly large procurements public procurements to national producers instead of getting that imported this particularly in this very large security sector including also if it is food for the hundreds of thousands of police and soldiers every single day I think this is something that as one of the many examples I think this is incredibly important to look at because it might not have and it was probably not have the immediate impact or will not be shown and felt by the economy immediately it will certainly not be felt by the actual people of this country immediately unfortunately it will take some time but I think it is I think it will be felt widely and it will be important I wish that would have been done in the very beginning I think as well the national unity government also again despite the security challenges has invested a very large amount of its time on improving regional cooperation with all of its neighbors and which has led to a number of really key trade regional trade agreements including the very important transit agreements we are aiming at becoming self aligned on food within the next five years as I said before I think it is horrific the numbers of import that we have even though we should be able to feed ourselves so this is going to be key to look at real agricultural looking at Bill Burd is here as well real agricultural planning this was not a focus of the past unfortunately so water management will be key I think 20 something dams are going into construction now and one has to consider appreciate the fact that 70% of our people live on agriculture and if we succeed and we will succeed in the development sector we can literally create millions of jobs besides becoming self sufficient of food I think overall to conclude on a positive note hopefully I think the Afghan mentality is one of optimism and resilience if you can generalize this however I think many developments of the recent past also indicate this would probably prove me wrong terribly if it is an opinion poll by the Asia foundation or if it is more tangible and more hurtful at the fact that Afghans currently make up the second largest group of refugees entering Europe I think there is still obviously a very long way to go I think it is important to be clear on what went wrong and what can do better I think we will have to be very practical in that process as well but we will I think we are getting to protect our people better and to offer this brighter future for all citizens I am very confident that the path now is on the right path together with that support that we can still have and we still very much enjoy and appreciate and I think that ultimately this optimism will prevail I think thank you thanks for taking off your diplomatic hat and thanks also for I forgot to put it on you for ending on a note of optimism our next panelist will be Dr. Stefan Oswald who is head of division for Afghanistan ministry of economic cooperation in Berlin and will give us the German perspective on cooperation but I want to take advantage of your topic to just recount a brief anecdote when I was working for Yunama in Kabul the minister from a prominent European donor country came to visit the special representative of the Secretary General and this relates to the discussion that the previous panel had brought up about this coordination role and it should have done it, it couldn't do it and that was exactly the topic of the conversation the SRSG was talking about the challenges of this and above all the coordination needed to begin with information sharing we had to know who was doing what of course agreement by the minister, I fully agree this is extremely important you need to play this role half hour conversation where everybody was agreeing and at the end the SRSG said anyway what brings you to Kabul is your bilateral assistance program with the Afghan government I won't say which country it was so with that introduction Dr. Oswald Well, Scott Smith, thank you very much let's say coordination is well a challenge and it is of course not a challenge only in Afghanistan only in civil cooperation of course working together is let's say one of the well the things which brought the human race to succeed on earth on the other hand it is also the biggest challenge there of course several reasons it is difficult to work together and on the other hand of course there are certain agendas which also limit the scope of cooperation that's basically my experience out of 30, more than 30 years in development cooperation while coming to Afghanistan I can only agree to what Mr. Jalal said with regard to the years 2002 and 2006 the wind of opportunity where one could have worked in the comparatively safe environment with regard to state building and also upgrading infrastructure was not taken up properly I can also accept the blame made by my friend Mr. Akaman in the previous panel at the time we had a minister in my ministry who had a bit of a problem interacting with the army and she was also not giving a high level of priority with regard to cooperation so we had around let's say a scope of 30, 40 million euros per year currently we have 250 million so we addressed it quite considerably and I think let's say as we didn't use the chance of the years 2002, 2006 properly jointly let's say we saw the emergence of a re-strengthened AOG especially in the years 2006 onwards and that brought the international community and also Germany to the conclusion while we have to do more militarily and we have to do more in civil cooperation so in the context of the London and Bonn conferences the German government not only increased its military cooperation but we also increased our civil cooperation BMZ to 250 million annually which we are doing still and another 180 million by foreign office which brings the total of 400 to 430 million euros per year which is the single largest budget contribution we give to any country in the world we also saw that by increasing development efforts Germany highlighted the perception that the conflict in Afghanistan was not to be solved by military means only we needed stronger civil in face and then in the years before however looked in retro perspective that should have been started a lot earlier and with more courage to implement conditionality also with regard we had it also in the previous panel with regard to assist the Afghan government to implement much needed reforms the result we see we are currently facing a high level of Afghan population discontent with their own political cast some of which we have contributed to by supporting the wrong people and not even really understanding what we did so we see today some strongmen in power throughout the country that probably should not be where they are and I am not talking about what we strongly support the lack of focus and attention to state building in the early days as well as the attempt to get quick fixes facilitated corruption however it was not the west that caused afghan corruption but we underestimated the significance of good governance and anti-corruption efforts for long term peace and development and the results and still is also a strong need to focus on productive economic structures Hila Alam was elaborating on that we well had a kind of an economy which was basically based on consumption and not on production and well under those circumstances considering the huge amount of funding that was pumped into Afghanistan by all of us afghans wonder why the domestic public income is so low so a focus on locally adapted economic activities agriculture more than anything else Hila Alam was referring to that but also energy and vocational training would have to consolidate the base of economic cooperation Germany together with the previous afghan government was doing a portfolio review in 2012 and basically more or less jointly designed a country strategy for economic cooperation for the years 2014 until 2017 where we are concentrating on sustainable economic development and job creation with water and education with a specific focus on vocational training the lack of private investment also shows that a much stronger focus on the rule of law would have been necessary legal security is still too weak for private investment also important to support government it is very important to support government to stimulate investments by afghans in their own country using funds currently deposited in Dubai or Istanbul banks that's what I receive as a message when I talk to German industry and to German business as long as the afghans are not investing in their own country why should we go there coming back to the original question, Germany realized between 2007 and 2009 that a coherent approach of different policy fields is indispensable for any stabilization effort in a fragile context we significantly improved civil military cooperation and the strategy developed by better understanding the limits and opportunities of each policy field Mr. Ackermann was making reference to that when we did our joint lessons learned exercise we came to the conclusion that we had worked together already in the year 2002 in a way like we are working now this would have not changed Afghanistan drastically but it would have certainly improved a lot in our way of doing business it would have helped if we had that cooperation right from the beginning that's very clear so I deeply hope we will learn from Afghanistan for the next Afghanistan be it Syria or elsewhere any stabilization exercise in a fragile context must have a strong civilian component from the very beginning defining possible solutions and major constraints and state and peace building before military strikes summarizing my remarks we can be proud that Afghanistan has been achieved Afghans as well as the international community and that is unfortunately not reported by the media thoroughly however the biggest challenge also like Hila Alam said is now to sustain and to enhance it what we have so we need really to support the Afghan government creating achievements and to enhance and giving perspective to the people of Afghanistan giving perspectives I see four elements we need to address in future security although the ANSF is doing a good job the capacities are too overstretched we need to address this in order to find a more sustainable solution than the current one to make it very clear more of the same will certainly not serve the purpose it is we don't need to go back to ISAF but a more robust interpretation of resolute could help secondly employment people need jobs to see a future we need to support productive economic activities in order to develop true life perspectives for younger Afghan generation third point trust in government we need to support the government on good governments including anti-corruption efforts and the rule of law and that is going to be one of the key issues on the road to the Brussels conference it is we need to have a renewed contract on those issues reconciliation think we all have to do more including diplomatic efforts in the neighborhood to facilitate a peace and reconciliation process finally the job in Afghanistan is not yet done it is probably not even half done so let us use the coming years effectively and we have to be clear if we are talking about an intervention we need to be clear that we have to have a long steam we are not talking about a decade we are talking at least about three decades thank you very much thank you so our next speaker is Matias Reisenkamp from the Conrad Adenauer Foundation the issues that Dr. Oswald mentioned was a civil-military cooperation I think that is also an issue you will touch on a bit more deeply thank you Scott you may ask the question why somebody like me who is supposed to be much more in a political kind of work will talk about a subject which is basically purely military actually I spent the years from 2007 to 2014 in HQ ISAF and it has what we call the operations archivist which is a kind of equivalent to a US4A historian which we had as well so basically what we were doing or what our task was to write a report or produce a report for every single day in the Afghanistan theater but on HQ level that means on a strategic level not on a tactical level therefore Scott asked me what was the resolution in Afghanistan which has appeared from 2011 to 2014 and the consequences it has produced until today basically I would like to start with a brief summary of the ISAF history and development actually ISAF was created in 2002 according to the Bonn Agreement by a resolution of the United Nations Security Council resolution 1386 and its original task was to enable the Afghan transitional administration under the interim's president Karzai to provide security across the country also to buy them time to create a new Afghan security force later to be known as the ANSF the Afghan National Security Forces and also to to make sure that Afghanistan will never become a safe haven for terrorists again those were the original intentions it was also meant to be to assist the Afghan administration to build up governmental key institutions all over the country but in the first two years ISAF had troop strength of 5,000 troops which is definitely not enough to explain why ISAF didn't get beyond the Kabul boundaries until 2004 in the years to come it was realized that this was definitely not sufficient to keep up the missions and to achieve its goals what was done by then we had a new resolution of the UN Security Council and to expand the ISAF mission throughout whole Afghanistan you can't do that it was 5,000 troops therefore this was done for stages to the north to the south to the east and the west and the number of troops was raised from 5,000 to 32,000 you see this is much more of an international task but the problem was pretty much from the beginning on ISAF was going into areas now where there was very little of governmental control where there hasn't been any ISAF presence before but what there has been is the Taliban presence at least in some regions so consequently ISAF became more and more involved in a combat operational role and here again it was basically three countries sharing the burden of the fight that was basically the United States it was Great Britain and it was Canada also some of the English speaking countries more and more involved in that but the other European nations were a bit how shall I say reluctant to step into the same role in 2007 the first American four star general and this was Daniel McNeill became the first American ISAF this had one reason parallel to ISAF we also had OEF going on in Afghanistan OEF Operation Enduring Freedom which was basically American and also British run at this time that was the global fight against terrorism so basically what we had until General McNeill took command was two different missions ISAF and second which was a purely fighting role OEF so with an American becoming Com ISAF we had a great synergy effect because he was the only one who could run and coordinate both different missions again it soon turned out to be this approach is not sufficient because in many regions of Afghanistan the Taliban were becoming stronger and stronger and when General McNeill was replaced by General David McKeon in 2008 became apparent we need a new approach and a more robust mandate so basically General McKeon asked the US administration to increase the number of troops because 32,000 were not sufficient to be on the fighting mission in Afghanistan so General McKeon and successor was General Stanley McChrystal who took over command in June 2009 and he had a very similar approach so what they did they did re-evaluate the mission and basically they asked for a troop increase commonly known as the search the first step President Obama raised the US troops by another 17,000 and the search was asked for another 40,000 on top of these 17,000 actually what happened the US administration allowed a number of troops of 33,000 they were supposed the biggest part of this troop body was expected to go into a classic counterinsurgency role that means they shall protect the population from Taliban influence but also from Taliban attacks General McChrystal had a strategy paper which was somehow leaked to the media but in this case it had a positive effect because it supported his intention and out of the 40,000 troops he asked for he got 33,000 again the situation has changed in between 5,000 which was an entire US brigade had to go to the north to support the struggling allies over there which at this time was mainly Germany because the insurgency especially in the Conagers area had risen to to a strength that was unknown before so consequently there were 17,000 there were 12,000 US troops missing in the east because we had the 5,000 in the north and 7,000 that were not granted and this did not allow to put up the same pressure on the Taliban in the east as the forces were soon able to put up on them in the south the classic counterinsurgency strategy by General McChrystal also implied that it was not the mission's first aim to kill as many Taliban as possible the main goal was to reintegrate them into society by using certain meanings this could also mean putting hard pressure on the battlefield on them but also providing them incentives of a social economic and financial nature to voluntarily leave the Taliban movement to reintegrate into society this was going under the Afghan national peace and reconciliation program and its original plan was by weakening the Taliban they should be forced to the negotiation table for peace reconciliation with the government and moreover in the areas where ISAF would go into right now for example in the south and governmental institutions should be established because there was in many areas no Afghan government presence at all at this time we talked before about the different summits that were a part of the strategy I will only mention two actually three on December 1st General President Obama gave a speech at West Point where he announced the search but he also announced in the very same speech that he would begin withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan 2011 so basically he announced the search but he also announced the withdrawal plan in the Kabul conference in 2010 President Khazai wanted or you can't say really wanted but he massively supported the idea of Afghanistan Afghan forces taking the lead in responsibility for security in their own country by the end of 2014 which already at this time was considered to be a very ambitious goal we had the Lisbon summit where this goal was confirmed that the Afghan forces should take over full responsibility for security in Afghanistan and this was confirmed later on the Chicago summit in May 2012 on the Chicago summit for the first time the detailed withdrawal plan to start in 2011 was officially declared I know there is a widespread discussion until today in the media if the search was actually success or a total failure and you basically see both of these opinions those supports support the opinion that the search was basically a failure argue on the ground of numbers that were provided actually by ISAF and I may give you some of these numbers just to give you an idea about that arguing on base of the ISAF figures for example they argue in August 2009 there were 2,700 attacks on NATO and coalition forces in August 2012 at the end of the search there were just 3,000 attacks the number of attacks has been rising insurgents attacked 2,000 times in July 2009 another 3,000 times in July 2012 so again we see here arrays about 50% more over they say in July 2009 there have been 475 attacks from homemade bombs and another 625 in 2012 so if you listen to these numbers would you really support this argumentation that the search was deteriorating the security situation of Gunstan so what would you say it's numbers prove to be so relative and everybody is interpreting them in their own favor because if you put into consideration ISAF did go into areas with no governmental presence with no ISAF presence these areas were safe haven for the Taliban especially in the south but also in the east if the search was to be meant a failure then you should also raise the question what would have happened if ISAF did not go in there the Taliban still reorganizing unmatched undisturbed for another 2 or 3 years raising taxes from the population refilling their rents by recruiting installing more and more shadow governors installing more and more Taliban like governmental institutions we can be sure that the Taliban movement would have been much, much stronger in the end of 2000 without the search and the search was actually meant to set up the condition for a successful transition the transition took place in 5 different stages from May, from March 2011 until the end of the ISAF mission on the 28th of December 2014 and basically there's not that much to be said about the transition then it was successful there was no raise no rise or increase in attacks on ISAF troops during the withdrawal and basically that went comparatively comparatively smooth so you can say some people argue that the Taliban wanted to let the ISAF troops leave the country undisturbed undisturbed to make sure they leave but that was not their original plan basically they have been weakened by the search on a very large scale weakened but they were not decisively defeated so you can argue well the outcome of the search is neither a total success but basically it's no total failure either what we have right now is the security situation that from the beginning or basically by the end of 2014 had deteriorated in a way that was unpredicted by any analysts we talked to by any analysts or experts on Afghanistan the ANSF which basically is if you talk to a lot of Afghans is the pride of the Afghan nation the police not so much the army did put up a performance that was to be honest under their conditions they had to fight on absolutely remarkable and even a failure for example like in September in Kunduz is more a mix of failure of governmental agencies like the provincial governor his deputy the Ministry of Defense but of course if you see the Taliban are able to overrun a city everybody blames the military in the first place not going too much into detail our major problem that we still face in Afghanistan is actually the corruption going down weakening the governmental agencies and also weakening the acceptance of the government inside the population and it is also undermining the support of the international donor community to pour in more money into Afghanistan because we cannot see what the effects really are we can see that a lot of progress was achieved especially since 2001 but also if you want so from the beginning of the search in late 2009 but as as General Petraeus put it out at the end of his command said well we have achieved a lot but all progress is fragile and not irreversible and that is basically the way we are looking at it now the actual mission is around 2000 people strong it's just train advise and assist it's not supposed to be in any combat role but it was originally supposed to provide stronger close air support to the Afghan national security forces what happened in the meantime was the global political situation has changed we have any way we have going on the European economic crisis it hasn't disappeared it just has disappeared from the headlines of the newspapers it's not solved yet we also have the conflict in Ukraine going on we have ISIS or how it's called in Afghanistan becoming a major threat in Syria and Iraq and that shifted the focus of military attention more and more to these theaters and Afghanistan shifted more and more away so basically what we have to do what our analysis was is to provide at least the Afghan forces much stronger close air support if possible because that has been the asset that has been identified for example by General Allen but also by General Dunford as critical for their success on the battlefield because at the moment right now they are taking casualties that have been risen that are 70% higher than casualties in the same time and this is something they cannot sustain for long so basically at the moment it's a very critical period also for the Afghan government to provide security to fight corruption but also to maintain the western commitment to Afghanistan so at the moment I would say we are not overly optimistic but there is still some hope left thank you our final panelist is Paul Fischstein who describes himself as an independent consultant but as we heard this morning from John Sobko he was outed he did write a report for us on economic policy which is out there and on the different ideas and ideologies behind the international community and Afghan perceptions of what a different role in the economy should be but this is another brief preface you had mentioned the numerous conferences that had taken place since 2001 I have been at a lot of them at one point it struck me that they all began in the same way which was a minister or a head of state saying now of course this is an Afghan led process but the Afghans must do A, B and C and each of the 41 heads of state had a different A, B and C which would have been very confusing for the Afghans who thought they were in the lead but were given about 120 different instructions at the same time so one of the issues I asked Paul to look at is sort of that coordination but also from the perspective of were Afghan and international elites sort of understanding each other throughout this process but since he's an independent consultant he'll probably say whatever he wants that's what independent means and as always being the last speaker I'm probably going to get red carded sooner than anyone else did I'm going to talk a little bit about the economy focusing on lessons learned from economic issues and Heela has quite nicely unfortunately set the stage by talking about some of the challenges that are facing the economy at this point I think she used the term gravely challenged we all know the numbers on the aggregate economy very robust in excess of 10% growth rates in the aggregate until 2011 and 12 and then decline in the growth rate to 3.7 and 13 and then 1.5% in 2014 which is actually below the growth rate of the population sustainability became very much a buzz word during the run up to the transition but I think it was mostly used not exclusively but mostly used to talk about government finance revenues the financial crisis the ability for the government to pay its bills rather than actually the sustainability of the real economy and create jobs so I'm going to talk about some of those issues but also I want to flag at the beginning you know as we think about lessons learned on the economy as well as really any other sector I think we also have to really think about the environment in which everyone was operating including Afghan actors given the insecure environment given the headwinds where should the economy have been in 2014 at the time of transition I mean everyone agrees it would have been nice to have more robust and continued wide ranging broad based growth but given everything that was going on how realistic was that so in these types of things it's usually standard practice to begin learning the things that I'm not going to talk about and there's a whole set of lessons that are now becoming kind of standard at these types of discussions I just want to hit just go through them really quickly and then I'm going to focus really on two observations one has to do with the transition itself the economic transition and the other has to do with the introduction of the market economy into Afghanistan and that goes to 2001 I think until now earlier today various lessons have been mentioned we've all talked about the pace and the amount of spending the volume of money that was spent as well as the over ambition which itself was in part a function of too much money and I would just I want to give credit to Andrew Wilder for first I think in 2009 surfacing that was the report on the 1950 to 1979 assistance program that was kind of a revelation when it was surfaced we all benefited from it so Andrew you should get credit for that also another thing I think that came out of that research was the notion that aid can be destabilizing a big fundamental tenet of a lot of what we did you know overall in aid but specifically in the economy destabilizing and I think some of the research that was done by Andrew and others at that time really started casting doubt on that or at least raising questions the other observation is and this was mentioned this morning by Dr. Jalali and others that security and other political objectives in many cases in almost all cases tended to trump development initiatives and I think we've all worked in the field, seen where that's operated where developmentally sound initiatives or activities were really overwhelmed by other political or security objectives not that this was necessarily a bad thing but I think we just need to be cognizant that this was happening and I think the final observation I'd make on that is that as we're all in lessons learned mode it was pointed out by a number of people starting with Dr. Jains as well as Inspector General Sopko that there really is a big difference between lessons observed and lessons learned and the question of whether as Dr. Jains mentioned whether we're now entering a new phase of operationalizing these lessons into our management and our decision making and operationalizing I think sounds almost trivial it's not trivial but I think it really in some ways understates the challenge because if we start looking at the political economy of our own institutions some of these changes I think would be extremely profound it would really challenge some of the base and the structure of the way we operate so again lessons learned lessons observed are not necessarily lessons learned so first point about the economy during the transition I think in the run up to the transition the economy was very much the whole economic issue of jobs was very much under identified it was neglected until it was not and I think I think Bill Byrd was one of the people who very early on kind of raised the flag of you know this could become kind of a self perpetuating thing it wasn't so much the spending per se although that was important has been discussed but it was that kind of uncertainty that important word of uncertainty that was introduced into people's calculations and I think what the someone mentioned the announcement of both the surge and the drawdown during the same hour and I think one of the things that does is point out if we're talking about lessons one of the difficulties and one of the challenges of speaking to multiple audiences at the same time I think those of us who live in the US understood the domestic intention of domestic content of that yes we're surging up but you know the end is in sight we're going to be you know drawing down if you talk to people in Kabul very different perspective it's they're out of here and even to the point and this was anecdotal talking to people that said I guess it was that tall building that was constructed near the US or under construction near the US Embassy from which an attack was launched in September I think it was 2011 someone said oh well you know on the day that was under construction and on the day of Obama's announcement you know they just kind of said oh it's over we're not going to finish it highly unlikely but I think it kind of reflected the attitudes and concerns that were going on ISA Afghanistan Investment Support Agency did a study in early 2012 on the like anticipated effects of transition 70 that's 70% of businesses surveyed said it was negative would be negative 25% said there'd be no effect and 5% said that would actually have a positive effect clearly that you know reflects whatever we think of polling data it certainly reflects concern a lot of people at that time were citing the 1990s as kind of the only mental model that people could relate to I heard many times the proverb that once you've been bit by the snake you're afraid of the rope so people didn't know it was actually coming but the only thing that they could recognize was what happened during the 1990s and then of course in 2014 there was the prolonged election process which turned out to be much more contentious than anyone had certainly hoped and I think we're still leaving with living with in terms of uncertainty some of the consequences of that process the second thing and this is kind of something I've been very interested in is the introduction of the market economy into Afghanistan post-2001 and I think from my view this is a good example it raises a number of issues that we in the international community either overlooked didn't understand or ignored and I think it's also a good example of where there weren't necessarily common frames of reference between the international community and certainly some of our Afghan counterparts the market economy was specified in the first strategy document issued by the government in April of 2002 and it was enshrined in article 10 of the constitution in 2004 constitution but I think it's still very much a live issue so much that on the other side of town in the last two days there's a conference by the afghan-american chamber of commerce and the tagline for the conference is transition to a market economy which to me is kind of stunning after four years that this is kind of the headline so we know change takes time but I think it reflects that this is still a live issue I think it's a live issue for a number of reasons one of them is that we in the international community I think underestimated the importance of rule of law and governance I mean economic affairs and we overlooked the politics and the political economy dimensions which resulted in anti-capitalism, state capture one of the examples cited I think it was a 2011 GIZ regional growth diagnostic was the large taxpayer office which was supposed to streamline things but actually it was seen as actually leading to predatory behavior and no one really wanted their company or name on the list because then there would be kind of a bull's eye on your back and you'd be identified I think also to be fair there was a conflation of the outcomes of post-2001 economy and I think Gila mentioned the wealth disparities enormous wealth was created in the last 14 or 15 years and you know obviously that's good but I think the extent to which that went to a certain group of providers or people who captured institutions I think that has been conflated with the whole notion of the market economy and the free market and I can give other examples of that and I think most people feel even people who are very fervent supporters of the market economy that it was largely again coming back to hasty implementation it was very much rolled out quickly there was a rush to privatize some of the state owned enterprises there and so again it was this hasty implementation to try to achieve the notion of free trade my understanding is that Afghanistan is some of the lowest tariffs in the region they very much adopted a free trade regime and my understanding actually that Afghanistan is about to sign WTO agreement in Nairobi and when I was in Kabul in February and talking to people in the various countries we only found one person who was actually in favor of a session to the WTO it's always couched as yes it's a good idea but not right now we don't have a level playing field we have predatory neighbors who are flooding our economy with cheap goods really a lot of this rises to the level of conspiracy theories so it will be interesting to see how that plays out and again lots more I could talk about here but I think it's interesting that the unity government one of its first rhetorical initiatives was on the economy President Rady's trip to China and there was a certain amount of euphoria I think when he came back and there were a lot of expectations about investment and jobs which obviously these things take time so I just want to highlight a couple of things specific cases of maybe where Scott as you mentioned Afghan and international elites maybe weren't on the same page or misunderstood each other one is of course the market economy very different reads on what that was I think and this was mentioned this morning the whole question of NATO caveats about what the military could do was very much misunderstood I think people when you consider some of the security events that took place in Barakhaan and Bal I'm thinking particularly of the April I think it was 2012 at MuNama events the question of where was ISAF and I think most of us can understand at least where these caveats came from but I think the Afghans found those many Afghans found those somewhat bewildering corruption was another area where there's very much a divergence of views I think around 2005 2006 was when corruption really started becoming a live issue and both the Afghan government and the international community was very much banging away on this but really they were talking about very different things and I think the international community was very much talking about corruption in the ministries, rake offs whereas the Afghans were very much highlighting some of the issues around contracting and subcontracting and sub-subcontracting which I think we're seeing as forms of corruption so I think very different models and definitions since I'm over my 10 minutes let me just wrap up by saying two other points and different kind of views one was the whole role of the government and I think this was something very very fundamental and in terms of what the government's role was going to be in life and we saw it in the health sector and we saw it in the economy that the government was going to take on a stewardship role rather than actually leading and being an implementer and I think for a lot of the population this was very much a new idea, a new orientation and they were looking to their government to take the lead in some of these things and I think probably a good job was not done in explaining to people which is probably a multi-generational process what the real legitimate positive role of the government would be related to that the whole question of self-reliance and Healer you mentioned that the dams major dams are maybe now on the agenda because I think if you talk to people over the last 15 years one of their most fundamental questions was why haven't we built one dam and we understand there are riparian issues international issues, legal issues but in terms of self-reliance in electricity versus importing it I think this is an issue that again the international community and many Afghans were on different pages so I'll leave it up there because I'm way over okay to try to more or less keep to the schedule let's have about 15 or 20 minutes of questions the same protocol as before please say who you are and I guess be as brief as possible to allow as many questions as possible I guess we'll start, do we have a okay we'll start with this thing Scott, you okay we got the first four Thanks, Scott Worden from Cigar I have a question I think particularly from Matias there's been a lot of discussion on both panels about the civ mill divide and you seem quite uniquely positioned to talk about it from your dual roles and my question is you mentioned that as ISAF expanded they went into areas where there was governance vacuum this was a mutually recognized challenge both the civilian and military sides it strikes me that particularly during the surge each camp if you will kind of assumed that the other would achieve their mission and they base their plans upon that assumption so the military kind of assumed and trusted that great we'll have civilians in there and they'll do governance and therefore we can kind of fulfill our original mission on the opposite side we assume security is developing officials and therefore we have grand plans that they can't be realized I wonder 20 cents do you think that's true and then more generally how do you really integrate a plan not just in theory but in practice that you adjust over time as those assumptions may become untrue I'm Dr. Kalker I was Deputy Minister during the time of Karzai and then his advisor on health education I'm currently also advisor to President Veni I have a comment and a question on the issue of surge in the troops that occurred that may have had some positive effect of course in and holding the Taliban for a while but our perspective then I think now is that in the long run it held the Taliban the way it held the Taliban I remember in that time the night raids were going on in various villages in Afghanistan and one group of people came from a place called Shindand in Herat and talked to the president when I was president in that meeting they said Mr. President it's okay if the Americans fight the Taliban and they come and fight the Taliban and they come and even kill us but please please stop the Americans looking at our wives that was a big issue because every time the troops went at night and went to people's houses to search people really really reacted badly in our opinion that was the analysis at that time of the cabinet and also Mr. Karzai that that really held the Taliban to recruit more Taliban in their ranks and that kept going on the other effect that had at that time that was the analysis that it lowered it lowered the morale of the Afghan army because they were also reacting to what the people were feeling saying what is going on are we occupied that the American troops are coming to our house looking at our wives by the way the issue of wife and others looking at wife Hila knows better is a big issue in Afghanistan so I think that was one of the thing but one question I have is you mentioned the issue President Obama announcing that he would also withdraw what effect that had on the Taliban we are still considering I would be very interested in your opinion maybe others could also comment on this Henning Leakey German Council on Foreign Relations I would like to ask about the drug production and trade in Afghanistan it's also since we talk about the economy I think it's a very strong economic segment as well of course it is fueling corruption it is fueling it is highly problematic people speak about the drug economy although the share of the drug trade and the over GDP has been going down but still more than 200,000 hectares of opiates they need to be harvested by hand so it's also a job machinery I want to know in the sense of lessons learned when where compromises made or decisions postponed when could one have stopped this development the drug trade to become such an important part of the Afghan economy was that possible and secondly is there a current handling of the drug trade maybe an understanding that it's so important for the economy and for the large number of unskilled jobs that are provided in the southern provinces that there's an understanding that you better let it be for the moment I just wanted to focus on a few issues and raise them as questions on the lessons learned mode because I think that's very good and I'm very happy to see this is not a self congratulatory conference about US and German cooperation but a sober lessons learned effort is any serious lessons learned exercise being done on the PRTs the discussion on civil military was very good it's like a natural experiment because there are many different countries ran PRTs Germany was among the first a country like Germany would be well placed to do this study so it doesn't get overly US dominated but maybe get several people involved I think that lessons learned because one of the most horrifying things I heard was from some US military people that the PRTs worked so well let's institute them in Africa without any real analysis of the whole development, security political economy and governance effects similarly ISA came up and I'm very glad it did I remember being in Kabul when Germany was the instrumental donor in setting up ISA well what are the lessons learned from ISA last year there was a big Afghan private sector meeting where the majority of the participants thought ISA should be abolished so what are the lessons from that I very much agree on the quick fixes in the early years but let's look very recently the NUG itself was a quick fix with the US, UN and I would imagine Germany also very much involved in that delicate bargaining and threatening that resulted in this are there any lessons learned, are there any regrets on the part of the international community warlords entrenched I agree with that point very much I would say is there also entrenched in the NUG itself they're clearly both officially in some cases and also behind the scenes last year just on the financing of the security sector I very much agree on this close air support business if you don't want more Kunduz, if you don't want more the hospital kind of incidents you need better intelligence and you need air support before rather than after a city falls to the Taliban I couldn't agree more with that it has to happen in some way but what are the lessons here on trust funds I've heard vaguely about an ATO trust fund how are you going to get many donors to contribute to the Afghan security sector and make it work and not put too much burden on the Afghans there are some lessons I would argue from the civilian trust fund which in the Afghan context has probably worked reasonably well there are also very negative lessons from the police and ministry of interior can we derive some lessons learned about what went wrong how does it relate to the lead donor system which may have been discussed in the previous section that seems to me and a few people I've talked to have just said that Geneva May 2002 meeting I think was really a mistake to put different donors in charge of different parts of the Afghan security sector Gail Maddox and my questions on the PRT so I'll make it short because Bill did a good job but my impression was the opposite from yours and was very negative so I really do want the panel to address the PRTs in Afghanistan and what how did they collaborate at all my understanding is very little across the coalition between the different countries but correct me if I'm not right and whether or not well just the bottom line on the evaluation of them but in particular the coalition itself and whether you feel there was sufficient across coalition lessons learned within the community thank you why don't I mean there's a lot of issues put on the table especially for you Matt yes why not let's go maybe from Paul backwards address any of the issues that you want to address and sort of consider this as well as a sort of a closing comment and then we should be able to finish more or less around 1.15 and break for lunch the PRTs there's a lot that's been written in some of it but the PRTs have multiple objectives also you know where would it be something that you would see positively or negatively I think you'd have to be very careful about you know the conditions under which you did it because again things got caught up in events and you know people want I think nations wanted to have PRTs to show that they were playing and I'm not sure it was well thought I'd personally be quite skeptical on ISA I mean I think yeah I mean the people seemed to think it was a great idea it started off as a beautiful thing and then unfortunately it spiraled down into something that was less beautiful and I think it just shows the what happens when you have opportunities for seeking of rents and keepers so I think it's something that's kind of you have to keep an eye on in that type of environment people are encouraged to extract rents on drugs very very quickly yes absolutely I think compromises were made I think if we look at some of the historically if we start looking at some of the coin the counterinsurgency activities there was a lot of reluctance to no in let's say in in Nangahar in the east there were a lot of compromises that were made with ANSF where it was again conflicting objectives there's no way that they can move into an area if they're going to be the tip of the spear for eradication or something like that so there are some compromises that were made some of them were sensible I think also in Barakshan up in the northeast probably the PRT there probably chose to look the other way on a lot of the cultivation and the trafficking that was going on potentially too much of a hornet's nest I mean that's my own opinion from talking to people in Barakshan it was just too much to take on well thank you quick run through first to search let's say and the withdrawal only concentrating on the economic effects so I think besides all the other points made I think the search of course created more steam into the economy and on the other hand the withdrawal the quick withdrawal also reduced that steam and I think one of the lessons learned is in this regard we should have aimed for soft landing this regard drugs well I think if we look on the drug issue in Afghanistan we should look on the drug issue elsewhere in the world and the only place where we actually were jointly successful was the golden triangle and the reason was first power monopoly by the state secondly well a judiciary which was only little corrupt and alternatives and that is the point which made me very unpopular in the first place with my minister he asked the same question and I said well all these issues are not in place in Afghanistan so you can't the only thing which is economically an alternative not real alternative but close to a saffron but you can't grow saffron in all the respective places and in this regard I think it is really government control and let's say the rule of law somehow present then you can offer a whole bunch of alternatives and as long as the first two things are not there you don't even need to think about the third PRTs well PRT and PRT is not the same so I can only talk let's say about the experiences we made and of course the PRT experience was part of the German ministry's internal lessons learned thing and we came to the conclusion that in principle the PRT thing is a good thing we should have transferred let's say the from the military to the civil phase earlier to give let's say also to our discussion partners the the governors civilian phase and let's say we should have been better in interacting Mr Ackerman was referring to the role of my ministry in Kunduz at the beginning of the PRT thing in this regard of course we accept the blame and we did better and the last one let's say the Balakshan one somebody of my ministry was the last one who switched the light off he was the last civil representative of the PRT in Balakshan and he was then the deputy in Kunduz so we also were able within my ministry to learn the lesson but if let's say the various actors within the PRT are interacting in a sensible way the PRT is an option also for other places in the world. Aisa I cannot I'm not deferring from you what you said it was as we started the whole thing we had a lot of hopes but I think we underestimated the African context in this regard well also the national unity government you brought up the question let's say looking on the situation we had at that time of course it was let's say I didn't see any alternative to what finally came out of let's say if we were then let's say only supporting President Ghani and not including let's say the second best well this would have probably meant well a division of the country and I think it was not in the interest of the country to have that division trust funds I think ARTF is at least from the civilian side I'm not talking about any security trust fund but ARTF is certainly something Hila Alambo was talking about let's say on budget it is something let's say to have on budget somehow with a safeguard and to say very openly that there is little enthusiasm in the German budgetary committee with regard to the German government providing budgetary assistance to any country of the world and if you have then let's say a bit more difficult circumstances like the ones in fragile states it will even be there will be less enthusiastic about such an attempt thank you I'm wondering whether regarding national unity government maybe I'll go already to the to the direct trade question is your diplomatic hat on or off yeah I think so I think I go to the clearly to the question I think very good questions of the CFR from CFR I think your questions were and also I think the second question was that if it is that big maybe should we just let it be too big to too big to get rid of maybe I think what is important to not forget is the fact that when after the fall of the Taliban this was already inherited I mean when we came out of that war that the drug trade haven't grown so strong in Afghanistan it already arose from those decades of conflict so it did also very much of course feed the anarchy or the criminal economy of the Taliban and other networks in the country which I think very interesting is though that it is in our religion this is of course something that is totally considered a sin I was often thinking that can't we focus more on having our religious scholars also supporting us in that and also there was also a time during the Taliban where it was completely banned again but then it rose again again I think money speaks louder than anything else so it was very necessary for the networks for them to sustain in terms of if we should just let it be I think the question is definitely no the answer is definitely no I think there is voices always different voices that would say that well for particularly for the poppy cultivation there is this need for illicit morphium also and for medical purposes can't Afghanistan be the big producer of that and can we just support I think this is not as sustainable as any need for that much of morphium in the world fortunately I think Afghanistan would probably seriously be around 500% of what is needed in the world and then also that again I mean that is business I mean there is countries already I think it's Turkey and others that are already producing that illicitly so we will not be able to take that away and I think enough for us to compete with the pharma industry I think this is not yet I think our Minister of Agriculture he's often being asked he's actually just here a couple of weeks ago in Washington he's very often asked he likes to talk practically about agriculture and how to move forward and he has a good vision very practical as well he's often however asked about the drug economy and poppy cultivation mostly he doesn't really appreciate the question that much he would always say that the reason why a ton of livelihoods or agriculture has not grown the way it should have and could have is very much because those counter-nacotics efforts were solely counter-nacotics efforts and the linkage also between a functioning agricultural system in smaller communities as well he had very nice examples of communities in Nangahar that had a lot of security problems for a long time also post-2001 and had focused very much on agricultural development have become self-sufficient themselves and have therewith also removed security problems there was fighting there was an insurgency that is not now there anymore so I think I know there has been the discussions on certain crops being an alternative I think again the counter-nacotics efforts of the last decade and more it did start with physical eradication of crops I mean really said Afghan farmers sent out and physically removed the poppies which has then also been suspended unfortunately I think it is definitely a very complex and very large phenomenon problem it is also that the demand for this is there worldwide it is not that Afghanistan creates that for its own consumption this is the demand comes from comes globally comes mostly from rather western countries as well so I think the it is a shared problem and it will be difficult to share that responsibility but I think it has to Thanks Matthias you have the advantage of having had the longest time to think about your answer and the disadvantage of being the one thing that stands between this crowd and the buffet so that's why I'm going to get the shortest answers come back to your question about civilian military cooperation especially after I have went into these areas to be honest that always proved to be the problem the plan in theory looked very nice we go in ISAF liberates or expels the Taliban from there but then of course there has to be a follow up there has to be a follow up by Afghan government agencies and that was the first problem sometimes they did not have enough qualified people sometimes they sent people who drove the population back to the arms of the Taliban because they were simply to corrupt and sometimes they had people but they didn't want to go there they simply refused and it was the same with the western institutions the UN was supposed to coordinate that but apparently that was a task simply too big for them because they also had to coordinate all these NGOs to bring them some NGOs didn't want to go they said this is not safe enough which was funny because some of them were pretty much on the moral high ground in their consideration of the military saying we are here to do the good and actually you're doing the bad but then they didn't want to go to areas where it's not safe where the soldiers were not before them to be honest that has always been the greatness of the plan and that's why ISAF never really succeeded but it's not the military task to do that it can only set the conditions for reconstruction and development but it can't do the reconstruction development itself so that always remained the problem and all of ISAF has been fairly aware of that but there was no way to solve that problem coming to your question of the night raids actually that did become a very big issue and you were right when you were saying it was President Karzai as well as parts of Jiroa massively objecting the continuation of the night raids one thing the night raids were basically ISAF's sharpest blade as we say it because they were enabled us to put the Taliban under such a permanent pressure because they were going after low level, mid level and high level Taliban leadership and they could not even recover because they could never feel safe so they have been forced to relocate house every evening some of them others were targeted and killed as a result the higher Taliban leadership at some point even refused to come back after the winter break to Afghanistan and feared to be targeted which had a strong effect on the mid and low level Taliban leadership because that did not exactly boost their morale because they said well our leadership is staying there, safety but they are expecting us to continue the fight but finally as it ended was in early 2012 there was an agreement signed by ISAF and the Afghan government that all night raids had to be overseen and coordinated with ANSF before so they could not take place just on an ISAF basis and from that time it got slightly better also the special forces team became mixed Afghan special forces with the American special force and from that time there were still complaints especially since the Taliban identified this as major weakness and tried to exploit it in an immediate campaign but finally they continued but in a very different way lunch is served in the large space downstairs but let's take a moment because this is a very good time could I have your attention please thank you good afternoon great host of USIP thanks for lunch also our other sponsors AICGS and DAG I'm Gail Maddox I'd like to reiterate this last panel challenges during the upcoming decade of transformation which I would say might be decades of transformation the first and second panel several people mentioned the importance of looking ahead of thinking about how to implement lessons learned for Afghanistan how to think about the way forward and what we'd really like to do in this panel then address the challenges that will be confronting we being the US Germany and more generally the alliance of course and those who have been involved very heavily since 2001 which I think the total number maybe not all at one time is actually 50 which is a lot of nations where should our priorities be what should be our civilian priorities what should be our military priorities need adequately to train the Afghan help in the training and assisting of the Afghan national armed forces and the police how can we better coordinate our efforts across the coalition which is something I've looked at quite a bit in a recent in a recent study and looked particularly also at bilateral cooperation issues as well as multilateral a lot of times we've done some of this on the fly people have individual very positive stories to tell but sometimes not as positive in the larger in the larger sense beyond security what do we what are the needs that should be bolstered where should our funds actually be developed and directed good governance rule of law human rights education the numbers that we heard in the first panel about how education has improved and what a big jump we've done and what we can expect to continue to do if the funding there if the emphasis and the focus remains there and I think that those are big ifs and I look forward to hearing from our panelists what kind of institutional restructuring may be necessary agriculture we talked about a lot in the last panel and I think is an important area and of course corruption again a very critical area have jobs been neglected as one person on the panel emphasized and I think it would be good to hear from our panelists on that issue and some at Jim Dobbins criticize that we had brought in too few forces I'd love to hear some of the comments from our experts here can we do the training assistance that we need to do in the Resolute Support Mission we've just both countries have just announced increases in the numbers of forces is this where we should be or should we be should we be further than that we're clearly not going to stay in Afghanistan the way we stayed in Japan and the way we stayed in Germany from the point of view of the United States but are we sufficiently planning for beyond that in other words what are we trying to do what should be the roles even of the UN of the OSCE who should we bring into this very important effort of Afghanistan and Afghanistan's future because that's what's really I think critical to be thinking about so with that I would like to I'm sitting in the middle because I can I can I can send this easier so all of you should be writing down your questions so that we'll have lots of time for questions and I think I'll start then shall I start down with Bill Hammack Hammack he was in Afghanistan on mission as mission director for USAID really just very very recently he came home in October of this year and he's now here at USIP for an interagency professional in residence his expertise being used then on detail from USAID here at USIP so why don't you start us off? Great thank you very much Gail good afternoon everybody I'm trying to stay awake in the afternoon and so I will be brief bring some anecdotes and some experience from the last 26 months that I had in Kabul as head of USAID I think a few key points one is that a lot of people talked about 2014 as the year of transition well clearly and this is something we talked a lot about in Kabul it's not just 2014 it's 2015 and we're looking hopefully to see in 2016 a year of implementation for some of the commitments made by the government I think that we have seen over the last year a significant improvement I think in terms of Afghan led especially on the development side starting with the London conference I think you're all aware of the realizing self reliance paper President Ghani and the government put forward at that conference it was viewed by the international community as a very good reform agenda and there was strong commitment at that point to support the government I think we all came out of London with a lot of hope and enthusiasm I think that it took a lot longer to move some things forward most of the cabinet wasn't named until May it just took quite a while to get things going I think it's very important at this point to take a look at what happened at the recent senior officials meeting which was held in Kabul September 5 of this year some of the documentation that the donors spent a lot of hours with key government counterparts on over the summer included what they call the self reliance mutual accountability framework or SMAF which basically took the place of TMAF that was a long discussion between the donors and the government on whether or not this new government needed to stick to TMAF which was really the Karzai government commitments to move forward with kind of their own and at the end of the day they agreed that this so called SMAF document which is available online if you haven't seen it it contains a lot of the TMAF principles around good development effective development but also it really contains the priorities and commitments leading to Brussels so it's really a roadmap for the next year looking at Brussels and I think that helped a lot of donors especially some of the Nordics and others with their parliaments to continue the substantial amount of funds a few other things the government came out with what they called the first mile progress report for the some they gave themselves grades again some of the key categories of actions and reforms from the London realizing self-reliance paper most of the grades were B, B minus but it was an attempt to be quite honest and straight forward reviewing again some of the documents from the senior officials meeting what really hit me again is the understanding in fact this is in the communique by the co-chairs of the legacy of the previous administration that this government has inherited a broken and corrupt system at the same time the World Bank Vice President who spoke mentioned about the impact of transition being more profound on social and economic recovery being slower than expected and so I think that really made everybody pause and not be in such a hurry looking to the future let me just throw out some of the key things that the donors and the government really focused on and these are not surprises major near term issues and we've already discussed some of these during today obviously the economy again there hasn't been the recovery there hasn't been the bounce in the recovery that many expected back in 2013 following the elections and this transition jobs you may have seen recently President Ghani announced so called peace jobs for peace program something they've been talking about for a while to expand the NSP in rural areas poverty if you've seen the recent World Bank report poverty levels have not decreased over the last 13-14 years this is something that I think this government is very interested and donors need to be much more concerned about what kinds of programs can really impact on that private sector development and investment again that hasn't we haven't seen that bounce back and fiscal deficits I mean that is continuing there's almost a structural fiscal deficit in the government and they're working hard on increasing revenues but that's something that's going to take a while let me just throw out a few key foundational issues that I think the government's moving on several of these but it's going to be extremely important if they're going to be able to show a real difference over the next decade obviously we've talked a lot about stability and security today that's key what I call government capacity broadly across the government especially at the national level also of course at provincial level one of my first meetings with the new minister back in the spring of a very important technical ministry he told me that he had taken a look at his ministry and 18 out of the 22 departments were completely manned by contractors funded by donors through kind of short-term off-budget contracts and so that's clearly not sustainable and other ministers told me the same thing so civil service reform is going to be key and President Ghani just last summer in July signed a decree to amend the capacity building for reform program a key part of ARTF and also perhaps just as importantly all the donors agreed to what's called salary harmonization for all of the national state that different donors fund both on-budget and off-budget another procurement reform key reform impacting on corruption across the board we heard that earlier President Ghani and Dr. Bula have taken the lead in kind of chairing Saturday night meetings reviewing all the contracts government contracts at first there was a lot of criticism because they slowed the process down so the donors feel it's been a very important process and now they're incorporating that not just at that level but also within each key ministry that there's a lot of procurement public financial management reform that's something that the government's focusing on right now and it's not so much keeping track of expenditures what it is as we heard from the DCM earlier it is making sure that policy is linked to budget and budget's linked to policy and priorities of the government decentralization and sub-national governance recently I met with the Jelani Pope Paul the head of IDLG gave a presentation to heads of agency and basically said that some 12% of districts have no district governor some 40% of districts have no national judicial presence in terms of staff or experts in the same in terms of line ministry representatives at district level so there needs to be a lot of work whether you start at the provincial level first and build capacity and then to district or how to use the CDC's or community development commissions and then tackling underlined drivers of corruption we've heard that all day today that's extremely important especially for legitimacy of the government agriculture is the driver of growth especially in the next many years as we heard earlier and then of course the extractives eventually to kick in in terms of providing key revenue it may not be a big jobs source but it definitely will be very important for the government to continue to move towards basically taking the responsibility for their own development and not almost 80 some percent requiring donor assistance so let me stop there thank you very much thank you very much Gail the agenda that you have proposed is of course much longer than this panel will ask so what I try to do is just I want to I would like to go along the questions that were addressed to us as panelists and throw out a couple of thoughts that might inspire the question and answer session in the aftermath the first one is on the the viability of current assistance programs in Afghanistan so what is important to me is that in the wake of NATO's withdrawal and even without a military aid delivery infrastructure that was provided by the PRT some civilian assistance programs could still continue in the more insecure country and that is particularly due to the well-established NGO practice working in insecure areas so my first point was would be then to just to rely more to invest trust into the Afghan NGO network that has access to many actors also in insecure areas secondly donors seem to better understand the need to focus on capacitating Afghan government institution in the field of project management which is vital for the sustainability of development projects and third the current unity government of Afghanistan provides an opportunity for reform but the viability of assistance programs for largely depend on helping to fulfill its own reform agenda and commitments by supporting it and formulating and implementing a convincing strategic plan to that end and my fourth point is that it's not been mentioned so far throughout the day is that one of the most crucial challenges relates to the urban rural divide in this country because that is basically accountable for its additional lack of opportunities a lot of mistrust in governmental institution that exists it relates also to the stronghold of the Taliban in rural areas especially also in remote areas and it is to a large degree also a means to justify the Taliban opposition against the big Kabul based administration second was activities have had the greatest impact and should have priority in funding and many to us community driven development implemented by the World Bank and the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development has had a positive impact on local and district level governance provision we have found out in our research that the highest level of trust exists into the CDC the Shura complex so to say those institutions that have been elected at the local level and so the level of trust is here in the two provinces where we have undertaken our research about 80% while if you go higher up to the district provincial and state level the level of trust is decreasing at large now second point despite justified criticism I think that was mentioned already by Hila Alam the rural economy in Afghanistan has become more self-sufficient and has been also least affected by the limitation of flow of foreign funds third international aid investment in health education has brought about substantial gains which is critical in terms of public presence and legitimacy of the state and the country's long-term economic development and finally despite many flaws for example being episodic or non-demand driven programs aimed at enhancing government capacity have helped to build a physical machinery for service delivery which makes people experience day by day the fruits of state building the third question is what institutional structures have been necessary to assure that the gains for the Afghan population can be maintained basically I would say all are necessary however there's no institutional structure that could be said to stand out in terms of success so the record overall is mixed for instance the high office of oversight so the anti-corruption body is a necessary institution but is perceived of being corrupt itself the national human rights commission is a necessary institution it has however set on a report of human rights violations by powerful warlords and never published it the election commission and electoral control commission are widely believed to be biased and corrupt but they are absolutely fundamental to the state building process so what I mean with that is that better planning is required and that also applies to the still high level of fiscal dependency so long term predictable support at reasonable levels would encourage domestic and foreign private investment in economic gains finally investment Afghanistan's younger generation will help also sustain achievements in basic rights and freedoms especially for also for women and girls but it is also a crucial topic for media and civil society finally the last question what should be the respective roles of UN NATO and the European Union as far as NATO is concerned set many times today continued support is necessary especially air capacity and close air support training inclusive including combat training apparently if you see what has happened in Kandahar the last two days of Afghan national security forces enhancing the intelligence capacity of the ANSF and what is also important is kind of political messaging in terms of continued support to the public UN its mere existence is a positive political signal of continued international support but it should avoid becoming involved in issues related to development and governance for which it neither has the capacity nor the infrastructure to undertake such activity so it could continue with its donor coordination role but with a clear handover plan to the Afghan government other UN agencies are currently seen by the Afghan president as a competitor to the Afghan government in terms of attracting donor funds and undermining the government capacity to deliver so they do not have a clear exit strategy which is a big problem to hand over to the Afghan government which can also perpetuate the weakening of state capacity and what is also criticized they are expensive and have an incentive to stay in the country rather than to leave European Union European Union can continue its development support and political support to the peace process it can also throw its weight behind the regional dimension of the peace process by engaging with Pakistan Iran and China and finally I would say that that is also important to share facts and figures and also the positive narratives that counter that are able to counter an overwhelmingly negative image that the results of the support missions tend to tell so more positive stories about what has been achieved in the country could really help also to make the international support sustainable but also to make the Afghan people believe in the success of this reform process that's a number of years previously as director of the Afghan and Afghan programs and he and I have talked about doing this several times so I'm glad it finally worked out so please Andrew thank you Gail and thank you all of you the survivors who have lasted so long and surviving the post lunch session there is coffee outside if you feel the need I testified I started working in Afghanistan in the mid-80s with a couple other people in this room Paul Fishtine lurking in the back corner and so witness our first hand the price of when the US I think prematurely disengaged from Afghanistan and didn't invest sufficiently in trying to reach a political settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan and last week I testified at a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing on Afghanistan and really that was my main message is let's not repeat that mistake and prematurely disengage and I think that's my overarching message for the future looking forward in Afghanistan as well there's a reason certainly for the US why we went there and it was not primarily because of our concern for the needs of Afghans it was because of 9-11 the threat of terrorism and that was been made clear in a lot of the US policy pronouncements since and if indeed that's why we went to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for transnational terrorist groups or destabilizing its neighbors and nuclear armed Pakistan in particular is of concern that threat has not gone away and so I think if that's been the rationale for being there all these years as that threat seems to be growing rather than receding it wouldn't seem to make sense from a US national interest perspective to be using this time to disengage so I think I just wanted to emphasize again why the US has been engaged there and why it would be important not to disengage which is why other panelists earlier today have highlighted I think the importance of the upcoming Warsaw meetings in terms of reiteration of commitments on the security front but also just as importantly Brussels that the civilian assistance is going to be critically important moving forward and others have highlighted it but that the economic crisis in Afghanistan is not getting nearly the attention it deserves I mean I think it's probably the single biggest threat to the legitimacy of the national unity government even more so than the deteriorating security situation and I think we're seeing that in terms of the large numbers of Afghans who are voting with their feet to try to get out of the country primarily a lot of that with the young men because of the economic crisis so I do think I just wanted to highlight those things and in that regard I also as Ambassador Cunningham mentioned welcome President Obama's decision to reverse his earlier decision and to remain engaged in Afghanistan with a 9,800 troop level through 2016 like Ambassador Cunningham I wish that decision had come a year earlier if not before I think we paid a heavy price but I'll take what I can get I think it's a positive signal of the US commitment but I think not fully registered with everyone which I think is probably even more significant than the decision to keep troop levels at 9,800 through next year is the decision with a number attached to it 5,500 for beyond that period which at one level it's a useful device to show that numbers are decreasing but of course come January 2017 another presumably president inaugurated in America and so to me the importance of this decision is that it allows for our bases in Kandahar Jalalabad, Bagram to remain open and then it will be up to the next president to make his or her own assessment of the situation on the ground and then decide on whether that 5,500 number is the right one or the wrong one and so I think the fact that now that decision is left open for the next president to decide is a very positive feature and I think backed up certainly by the very impressive commitment that Germany has made in terms of increasing troop levels at this difficult time I think is a very encouraging sign to Afghans about the longer term commitment which I do now think really needs to be matched also by the Afghans taking and the Afghan government taking the issue of governance and effective governance much more seriously I think if there's one lesson to be learned from the last 14 years the problem in Afghanistan cannot just be addressed through military means alone we need that complimented by good governance and I think there's an opportunity there and on the one hand I think we have a much weaker government than we have and it seems to be getting weaker on the other hand it is a government that I do think certainly in terms of the leadership more reform oriented than its predecessor and so there's an opportunity for a partnership there that we didn't really have before and that's been one of my consistent criticisms of a lot of our previous policies in Afghanistan is that for example our coin well coin was premised on the idea of let's go out and have a bottom up approach and win the hearts of the minds of the people to support the government and PRTs were going to extend the reach of the central government and I think all of that strategy actually I think might have made sense if we had an Afghan government partner that shared that strategy but at the time we didn't I think President Karzai's strategy which ultimately proved to be a more effective one was ultimately to stay in power and to do that through patronage means and so he I think very effectively used a lot of the vast resources that the international community pumped into the country to sustain patronage networks and that was his model of staying in power and I think it worked very well for him and those who were had access to resources but it certainly was completely contradictory to the objective of coin of winning hearts and minds of people over to a relatively corrupt and predatory government so so moving forward again I do think we have an opportunity now to be more aligned with the government but we do need to see much more action from that government in terms of more effective governance moving forward I have a bit of a dilemma because I again as Paul mentioned seven or eight years ago you know came across this interesting USAID report that John Sopko referred to earlier and I've never heard anyone mention this report before and so last night when I was thinking of what to do in terms of lessons for the future I thought wouldn't it be clever to dig up that report and come up with some of the findings from that and then do exactly what John Sopko did but proving his worth as a credible investigator he did his investigation and came across that before nevertheless I'm going to quickly just go over a few of the points that were made in that report which was contracted by USAID in 1988 the Soviets they were withdrawing from Afghanistan I was working in Peshawar at the time with agencies working cross-border in Afghanistan and we were all tasked with coming up with our strategies to move our offices from Peshawar where many of the international NGOs were based as well as Afghan NGOs or Quetta or Islamabad into Kabul once the Soviets withdrew the Najibullah regime collapsed and everything was going to be fantastic and this report was basically contracted to look at what lessons are there from the large USAID program from 1950 to 1979 a lot of people forget Afghanistan was the largest per capita recipient of foreign assistance in the world for much of that period because of the Cold War era but again one of the points that John mentioned was again the U.S. assistance program in Afghanistan was over ambitious both as to scale and in timing and in many ways the program was larger than could be effectively administered by either the U.S. or Afghan government and yet I now see that as an opportunity of right sizing I think we're no longer going into that phase of being overly ambitious and as long as we can not go which we have a tendency of one extreme of trying to do too much to the other extreme of trying to do too little in a short period of time which I think would be incredibly destabilizing and we're already seeing many of the effects of that if we can get it into that golden mean I see a lot of opportunities for actually the quality of assistance improving moving forward as with shrinking resources we are forced to prioritize before everything was a priority and people are trying to do everything and so as we heard before aid coordination was much more much more difficult to do I think it would also remove some of the perverse incentives of where a lot there's so much money that one of the preeminent incentives was basically maintaining your burn rates use it or lose it in terms of budgets and I think now with smaller amounts there could be I think a significant increase improvement in the quality of assistance moving forward the second thing point was time scales you know again quote US expectations of the time required to achieve effective project results in Afghanistan were generally unrealistic and we all know I mean these short term time frames just killed us in Afghanistan I mean again another lesson to be learned is you can't do you know state building on one year contracts year after year you need the long term approach and I think is there an opportunity now moving forward where you know the dynamics have changed I think there's more realism permeating the situation where we can recognize the need to be engaged for the longer term and come up with some longer term approaches to how to strengthen the institutions of the state in particular now again that I think we have a partner in the government that's committed to reforming how can we work in partnership with them to move some of those forward in more realistic time frames for strengthening state institutions a couple of the other things the quote the high US staff turnover in the aid mission was a weakness which worked against the sustained and more successful technical assistance program unfortunately I don't think that one's going to go away I think it's in one of the earlier sessions I think it was John Sopko who is I think praising the military in terms of the lessons their ability to do lessons learned and quite critical the civilians however I think one of the real curious things for me is we paid an incredibly heavy price again in Afghanistan for the rapid turnover of personnel civilian and military we all knew this you know here's a report talking about this is a problem in the 1950s and 60s and people were probably there on two or three year tours at a minimum and we were doing initially for six months or nine months or then one year and then you know and then for some of the civilians if we're lucky and had someone like Bill here two years but two wars later after Iraq and Afghanistan tremendous you know expenditure of blood and treasure also prestige wars that we wouldn't necessarily categorize as winning we're unable to change some of these basic incentives structures in terms of how the U.S. operates in these kind of situations so I think again I'm not optimistic we're going to fix that but it's so incredibly important the other point was which again John mentioned was the U.S. generally had too much confidence in the applicability of technical solutions to complex social and economic development problems and of the appropriateness and transferability of U.S. values and experience and you know I think to me this is another one of the real important points is the importance again of understanding context but also understanding politics you know I've said this in several other similar for where like the U.S. we have sort of two tools in our armory when it comes to these kind of things one is our military money and we can deploy those with a vengeance but often the problems as they are in Afghanistan are fundamentally political problems for which the military money can be effective but if you don't have a clear overarching political strategy and when you have such overwhelming presence of on the military front which leads to I think often having military strategies that are not clearly aligned with political strategies as I think coin was one example I think we often fail and so I think to me you know there seems to be more sensitivity about interfering in politics however when you send 140,000 international troops to Afghanistan I kind of view that as interfering in the internal affairs of Afghanistan or you know on the budget side we were clearly overwhelmingly dominating you know at least the listed economy and yet we're much more reluctant to actually have a political strategy in these kind of situations and I think that's going to be critically important and I guess maybe I'll just end with the point that I think Jim Dobbins made was the need to prioritize a peace and reconciliation component early on and you know we missed that opportunity but I think it's still there I think you know those of us who understand this as a peace institute person but you know I think again another clear lesson is that there isn't a military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan and as difficult as it is and I'm personally not terribly hopeful that in the short term there's going to be any grand bargain leading to peace in Afghanistan but we need to be constantly having that inclusive political process and settlement as the objective that we're striving for opportunities you know to seizing them when they arise as we've missed those in the past when they weren't front and center as a priority for the U.S. So I think I'll end on that note. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me turn now to Ambassador Flaus Sheria he most of you many of you will know him he became ambassador here in 2006 a lot of the negotiations too on this side, on the government side when needed Thank you, Gail I would like to broaden my reflections a little bit beyond Afghanistan I would like to ask the question what are the lessons we learned in Afghanistan which we can use for challenges in crisis management and stability transfer in general and so for all future stabilization and nation building efforts and I'm specifically I will think what can we learn from our Afghan experience also for Syria for maybe Middle East for territory occupied by ISIL and other operations and I will draw of course of failing states and I will also draw on experiences we made in the Balkans, in Libya, in Iraq I will try to formulate 10 thesis don't be afraid, they will be short and very short actually and you can deepen that in the discussion if you want to before I come to these 10 thesis of course I have to say that they do not apply equally to all future cases because it has been said these are only rules of thumb because each country in each case will be slightly different but my first thesis is let's make it as multilateral as possible let's cast the net as wide as possible of course we start with our friends and Jim Dobbins I think was it who said already that the reason was of course that Germany went to Afghanistan was solidarity with the United States after 9-11 that was the number one reason and so we start with our friends but I think we should not stop with our friends we should also look for instance in the case of Syria and of the case of ISIL we should look at other maybe less likely partners for those operations like Russia, like China and I for instance we made a big effort in the 1990s to include Russia in our Bosnian operation we went all of our way to include them and it finally worked we actually had to change the rules to make it work but it worked and so that's my number one my number two is use the existing capabilities of international organization and also of international organizations whenever possible and whenever that is realistic for instance NATO has a unique command and control structure which the coalitions of the willing don't have and for instance the EU but also NATO have logistical capabilities which other countries don't have and you Gael mentioned also the OSCE and the OSCE might play a role in some of the conflicts maybe not as a device not as a decisive role as the EU and NATO but it is important I think it was already mentioned by many before that it was a huge mistake between 2001 and 2003 not to use NATO it's like using the fiat that you have on the road and leave the Mercedes in the garage it is not a wise thing and I think we paid for that it was also not wise to have two separate operations and you had US led enduring freedom in addition to the framework nation concept and I think it was a huge step forward when in 2003 we merged all these operations and which we also handed it over to NATO what became ISAF third point you always need a political process to accompany any operation that is absolutely key and that process has to be twofold it has to be a process inside the country in question and also a process which includes all the outside players we learned that quite painfully in the Balkans we had a process for the outside players which was very helpful but I think only in Afghanistan in the Petersburg conference we learned that and to look at the future I think we should not underestimate the importance of the so-called Vienna process for Syria fourth point I can be short on that because much has been said about that we have to make our approach as comprehensive as possible also that we learned in the Balkans we defined it in Petersburg but it remained theory until 2004 we had divergent objectives and unfortunately on many levels we had divergent objectives and some people already mentioned it inside our countries in Germany you could clearly see it I had to deal as State Secretary with it every week inside the country but also between countries between partners of the coalition and so we have we have a very very difficult very important lesson to be learned this comprehensive approach must include positive incentives which have to be linked like security, development good governance, rule of law, health education infrastructure, police disarmament but also negative ones you need always a way to punish the one who does not comply with the rules either by the military by the police or also by cutting off financial funds for instance support for Taliban or ISIL in the future fifth lesson there must be a balance between military and non-military measures we learned that after the Kosovo war when we realized that we needed the stability pact and that's what we created in 1999 and you need a balance between those two things which I just mentioned between incentives and intervention and we for instance we had the case of Iraq where the intervention was too much militarily done or was near the other problem where we were in the first two years not military enough sixth thesis don't make regime change the overall objective because lasting change can only come from within lasting change in the country can never be brought by from the outside about by foreigners this has some aspects the first aspect is that the proposed measures have to be accepted in the country where they are supposed to be implemented that means you need acceptance and for that you need also this political process which I talked about and then you need local ownership and you need basically indigenous institutions which carry them out there's a difficult problem related to that the problem how many of the old structures you keep very difficult problem I think in Iraq the decision was to dismantle those and I'm not talking only of the administration I'm talking also of police and military of the armed forces and how much do you keep I think the problem first came up in 1945 in Germany and and how many players of the old regime you leave in some position because they have knowledge but of course they're also tainted so this is a huge problem I think it needs to be addressed openly and it doesn't get better by not addressing it and you have to balance keep the country functioning and not decreasing legitimacy by keeping too many people of the old regime seven thesis you need internal reforms that's very touchy because of course it's very important to have good governance to fight corruption to have education extremely key but you on the other hand be careful not to destroy the culture of the country so also this is a balancing act also this is touchy and you must really condition sometimes what you give to a country by looking at the fact if internal reforms are implemented 8th point and I think Andrew has already reminded us that this was this morning very important point by Jim Dobbins reconciliation is absolutely key it's a process which you need at the country I think for instance in Iraq it was did not really succeed between the Sunnis the Shiites and the Kurds I think the best example is South Africa I think in South Africa I think it was achieved in Afghanistan I think the balance is mixed we try to have a conversation with the Taliban between the end of 2010 until mid-2012 the Taliban didn't want it and therefore it didn't come to fruit my second last point strategic patients we need the quality of long distance runners some of these things will take 20 30 years George Marshall I mentioned already yesterday said in 1941 to FDR don't forget democracies can't sustain wars longer than 5 maximum 6 years so we need to finish the job at the maximum 5 years and of course there's also the effect that occupying forces always breed resentment inside the country my last point already the 10th point already addressed this morning aggressive expectations and overly ambitious objectives in the country but also at home again this is a problem of democracy it is a problem of democracy because in a democracy you need to get the support of parliament of your public and that's why Wilson after in the middle of the first world war he said we have now we fight a war and all wars he spoke of self determination of all peoples he spoke about the fight of democracies against authoritarian regimes although of course Russia wasn't that democratic so I think we made the mistake to promise too much in Afghanistan but also to our own publics we told them we will get all the girls to school and we will get perfect education Jim Dobbins again was right when he said let's not compare with other global countries but with the regional countries and I think also it is right that the aim is not to enhance GDP in some other country but to create a society at peace with itself and its neighbors thank you very much our final speaker has spoken but would like to speak directly to the topic of this panel which we greatly appreciate and so I'll turn it over to Ambassador Cunningham thank you I'll be very brief and not elaborate much on the three points that I want to make but following up on the same theme that Klaus did about extracting from the Afghan experience certain key lessons that will be applicable in the future in other places where I'm afraid we will be required to use them the first is and we talked about this quite a bit this morning in various facets is the importance of this civil civilian military relationship and the kinds of conflicts or crises that we're going to be dealing with in the future we will they won't be the same as Iraq or Afghanistan they'll be different but the core principle of having an alignment of civilian and military personnel and goals and objectives and policies will remain central I'm convinced to our ability to deal with these things that requires a clarity of goals that sometimes difficult to provide and it requires learned habits of cooperation at least in the American system our civilian component of our government and the military components are quite different in their training and their orientation as we saw in Afghanistan and Iraq to understand and respect each other and to work together for the common good if they understand what the common good is so we're going to need military strategies in all of these places to align with each other and support each other as we go forward the second is the importance of timely political decision making and this is something that you can say until you're red in the face and can't force anybody to do it and politicians don't like to make timely decisions if they can avoid it but what we've seen repeatedly going through in Afghanistan and elsewhere Iraq other places and we're seeing it right now in crises that we're trying to deal with is that we're we end up in a situation where we're responding to failure instead of ensuring success and that's very costly and it's dangerous and as as publics we should be demanding of our political leaders that they do more about ensuring success and do less about responding to failure the third point I wanted to make following up again on the thought that Klaus and some others made about the need for strategic patience and only get strategic patience when you explain to your people why that's required, why it's necessary and we need to do a better job of that I found when I was dealing with visitors in Afghanistan many visitors from the congress and other places that if you sat down and explained to them what it is we were actually about in trying to achieve and what we were achieving where the challenges were and it's not something that governments like to do with their people it certainly has not been something that the Obama administration has wanted to spend very much time on with the American people because governments don't like to tell their people that they have a problem that they're going to be dealing with for another 10 or 20 years and we are going to be dealing with this problem in one form or another for another 10 or 20 years and we have got to find a way that will encourage them to understand and sustain the effort that's going to be involved whether it's in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the world we will be preparing to do I'm afraid thank you I think we have five very good commentaries remarks and let me open the floor for then your comments as they're trying to get the microphone maybe I'll start over here since the other two moderators always started over there do I have anybody here I'm exhausted yes please if you can say your name and affiliation thank you I was struck with something you said and I totally agree namely that if there is a regime change you need to be very careful whether you abolish established structures or you keep them to the extent possible and use them and what I saw for example in Iraq but also in Afghanistan was the lack of political leadership in defining what the actual course of action would be because in Iraq established structures like the police and the military were not just established and that was common consensus within the US administration and operation but the military seemed to believe that these structures would be kept in place and used whereas the CPA did away with them so following up and just supporting what you said the political leadership has to take these critical decisions to really ensure a unity of effort in the field and this is I think what has been missing to a certain degree in Iraq but also in Afghanistan thank you Jonas Kassel from the German Council on Foreign Relations maybe to tie in with my predecessor in the workshop we had in Berlin in April I think one of the open questions or lessons was that sometimes it might be necessary to withdraw the sovereignty of a state in order to enable useful state building at least for a certain period of time in order to create resilient state bodies and this would not really resonate with the 10 thesis you just proposed Mr. Sharia but maybe to all of you do you think that it is necessary to withdraw sovereignty for a certain period of time thank you General Bakken Yes I like at one comment and that's also a complementary part to reconciliation actually we in RC North were pretty successful with and that was the reintegration and disarmament of numbers exceeded by far all the other cases that we had in all the other RCs and this was mainly driven interestingly by the American deputy who exactly did not follow the procedures and that was the reason why he was successful in this so there is already a part that even in a more volatile environment you can do actually to appease the situation simply weapons of the market and to help people who want to give up the fight to return into society it's worth the effort and it helps actually then with the later part that is inevitable that's the overall political reconciliation process my question would be you mentioned that it might be also the time for others to step up in that role to mediate between maybe the Taliban it's not only the Taliban there are many other groups out there as the IMU as the Harkhani network and others and even dash forces are building up right now in Afghanistan is what country would be best suited I have my doubts when it comes to Russia because it is historically has been involved in that country and China always is not highly welcomed by the west though they have done a pretty good work when it came to spurring the economy there and they have never gotten the credits for it that they deserved but that might be the question if there is another Muslim country that might have that role where the Americans the west also could step back and say why don't you go into and take the political reins into your hands here and mediate between government and the armed resistance in Afghanistan let me take these three and then I'll come back and suggest that you either respond to one of our questions from the floor or if you want to make a comment about what someone else on the panel said that you agree with or don't agree with you could also use it for that reason First question on regime change as I said it's delicate there is no clear answer in each case you have to really weigh how much legitimacy am I going to give up to have a functioning body there, a functioning state or how much do I prefer to have a functioning system there is no clear answer just what I say is you have to make a decision on that early on actually on the very first day of the operation and basically already before you do the operation and you have to find agreement among all those people who couldn't operate just an example in the case of Syria it might be helpful to say to the Russians our first aim is not regime change it might be also one aim but that's not the first aim let the Syrians decide for themselves whom they want it's not our number one aim to have a certain regime or get rid of a regime slightly different in the Taliban case we had to get rid of them because they were responsible for 9-11 but each case is slightly different withdraw sovereignty I would say yes for whose question was it I would say yes but I think in each case slightly different you see in the German case in 1945 it was withdrawn totally for four years no German sovereignty whatsoever in other cases it was much less let's say let's not fool ourselves we of course I mean the intervening forces totally decided what happened in Kosovo for instance there was nobody on the ground who had anything to say except for the people who intervened NATO and later on the European Union and so on so I think you will always have a phase where sovereignty is very much limited I would say almost nonexistent the last question Russia and China maybe I was not clear enough I did not propose that they should mediate I didn't say that I think we should not do that we should not allow them to be the main mediator also in Syria there are other cases when we now do work on other problems, failing states but what I meant is we have to include them we have to take them with them with us let's not put them outside let's not push them away from us let's include them let them become also stakeholders so that they have a say I don't think it is in our best interest if we create situations where it is let's say the West against the rest of the world I don't think that's good let's try to cast a net as broad as possible but not allow necessarily Russia or China the leading role there should be there but I think the leading role should be to them I think in first of all I agree with what Ambassador Sharia said about the sovereignty issue sovereignty exists along a scale of absolute sovereignty with which very few countries have we all yield bits of sovereignty in our relations with other countries to a loss of sovereignty that occurs well for a period of time then the challenge is how do you restore sovereignty which we actually have a fair amount of experience in and that works pretty well I did want to say a word about reconciliation we have felt for quite some time and I still feel that this the process of reconciliation within Afghanistan has to be Afghan an Afghan to Afghan process there are lots of things that other countries can do to help that and encourage it but it fundamentally for a wide variety of reasons needs to be an intra-Afghan discussion and we voluntarily that is the United States Government decided in 2011 that we would no longer engage in discussions with the Taliban about Afghanistan without Afghan representatives in the room which I think Jim Dobbins pointed out this morning caused the Taliban to stop talking to us the challenge now is not to find a mediator the challenge I think is to find a way to change the to help Afghans change the relationship of the dynamic so that they can find a way to open the door themselves to a discussion with the Taliban or at least a faction of the Taliban that's interested in giving up the fight and joining in a political discussion about the future and that is going to involve finding some kind of modesty vendi with Pakistan as well so the United States and China most recently but many other countries over the years Germany, Norway and others have been quite helpful in trying to find ways to help open those doors but at the end of the day it is the Afghans who have to do it maybe just to follow on one point there I think right now the single most important thing that the US and I think our other international allies can do in terms of supporting the peace process is ensuring that the Afghan state doesn't collapse and ensuring that we have a legitimate state to actually negotiate with the Taliban I think right now in terms of the short term that short to medium term that will continue to be a top priority I did one other point I did want to make in the effort to be not too doom and gloom but maybe a little more optimistic in terms of identifying an opportunity looking forward and bear with me one more quote from this famous USAID report now the use of aid for short term political objectives in Afghanistan tended to distort sound economic rationale for development and in the process to weaken the longer term political interests of the United States aid as a tool of diplomacy has its limitations and I would add security when politically motivated commitments are at a much higher level and promise more than can reasonably be delivered in economic returns to me this is actually the single most important quote in this report and a real lesson relates to the research I was doing before challenging some of the assumptions around the effectiveness of aid in terms of achieving and promoting our stabilization our hearts and minds and security objectives I mean I think security was the number one need in Afghanistan and if there is an evidence that development assistance was really effective at promoting security objectives you know I think a very strong case could be made to militarize some of your aid to achieve that security objective however if it's not effective and indeed a lot of the evidence is counterproductive that the aid actually fueled the corruption that delegitimized the government that you know fueled the insurgency then it didn't make much sense to militarize our assistance and I think actually now that we don't have a strong big military presence throughout the country I think there's certainly downsides to that but one of the positive sides is I think there's a real opportunity moving forward to instill a lot more rationality in terms back into how we prioritize our development expenditures in Afghanistan moving forward and now I suspect that Bill Hammack for example was under a lot less pressure than some of his predecessors as USA admission directors in terms of having to spend all his budgets in the most insecure parts of Afghanistan where it's actually hard to do development so moving forward I think there's a real opportunity now to have a much more coherent and effective development strategy that's not so militarized as it was in the past just two brief comments one on the sovereignty and one on reconciliation as far as sovereignty is concerned it has an external and internal dimension and some some states are not sovereign because they have lost control over parts of their own territory and to restore the territorial integrity or the sovereignty the internal sovereignty it is required to find a way to create a kind of nationwide dialogue on alternative structures to what is what is existing on the ground there are some positive examples in transitioning societies like in South Africa but also Kenya later on Tunisia there are less successful example the Yemen there is some hope Sudan but in general the overall question is so how to create what I would call sufficient inclusivity and participation to restore a state that is based on rule of law and that has the monopoly on the use of force as far as reconciliation is concerned so we work on a lot of conflict transformation processes in conflict stricken countries I can only warn against the idea of having an orderly reconciliation process it's more about the avoiding a culture of impunity which is always a tendency especially in the early phases of negotiations to tolerate those actors that are the strong actors on the side of the power contenders and to accept them as serious negotiators and partners in the peace process and that is something that is looked at in the broader public with great suspicion if there is impunity vis-a-vis those actors how then should you organize reconciliation process within the country so what the international community can do is really just keeping an eye on avoiding this kind of culture of impunity that is a great risk in the early phases of transition just a few comments on the sovereignty question I think in countries like Afghanistan and also for example South Sudan that have come out of decades of civil war it's inevitable that because it's going to take a very long time to build institutions especially state institutions and the capacity of nationals within those countries to do that in Afghanistan for example I'm told 12-13 years ago most of the experts actually doing line functions setting up systems and procedures where ex-patriots today they're almost all Afghans and so that's a big change but as I mentioned most of them are donor funded unfortunately but if you look at some of the literature on state building you'll see that even countries that were peaceful that have moved into independence for example like Botswana in the mid-60s they required expatriate experts to help do line functions for years and decades to come Mozambique took decades because they had so few trained national Mozambicans in that case to carry this out it depends on the country but in most of these countries it's going to take a long time please Tony Wills from the joint forces of Brazil's command in Possum I was thinking about resolute support much about it today and I was wondering after Afghanistan was briefly again in the focus of the German security interest and even at this height of focus we only managed to add another 130 soldiers domestic policy again I mean regarding the job of train, advise and assist we only practically do advise of the 1,500 personnel in the Camp Marmel north of Afghanistan we have 46 advisors I talked to a general bornerman during lunch break and he called it a feak leave so we're doing something but it's highly irrelevant so my question would be do you share this opinion what's your opinion about the role of resolute support should be does it fulfill its mission is it efficient personally I think that I have the impression this is my personal view that we're using this mission to give the Afghan government a bit more leverage in the reconciliation process and well is that really what we're doing there is that really what my fellow soldiers are doing there is that our mission just be there to give you some leverage thank you I just have a comment the Chinese involvement in Afghanistan in relation to peace effort the Afghan government has recently repeatedly contacted the Chinese to get involved and there are reasons one important reason that the Afghan government perceives is that the Chinese have influence over Pakistan and the other reason is that the Chinese are very interested in investing in Afghanistan they are already involved in mining, copper in Afghanistan and loger and also our information is that they have some influence over the Taliban so the recent meeting in Islamabad in which Chinese were also part of the discussion I think raises a lot of hope among the Afghans that this may be serious and may produce some results but they don't trust Pakistan unfortunately thank you let's say Catherine Kelly here I was very pleased to hear the emphasis that was put on the question of strategic patience and I wanted to add a few comments about why I think this is a desirable but practically a vanishing goal always in front of you and not quite achieved in a time when a young soldier sitting in Afghanistan can sort of send an instant message to his family or to his more importantly representative in congress about he hasn't got any dry socks which happened with some interesting results immediate plain dispatched with warm socks you know total one box you know really means that your chances of getting strategic patience is pretty slim unless you prepare for it and that's the question I mean several of us in this room have sat in preparatory commissions I remember before Iraq gathering information about the Iraqi institutions and who was in them and how many people probably could be kept should be kept much done all public record although done behind closed doors within how many weeks after the invasion all of it was set aside none of it was ever looked at I remember particularly we had I think 11 working groups at that point setting physically to work but no one was told that the working groups no one in the political sphere and moreover and this is the point I think that is common to all of the experiences and will be common in Syria in Ukraine let's not forget Ukraine also on this list is that no one's told why it's important to think about this no one's told what the cost will be if you don't begin to exercise strategic patience even before you need to the idea that you are setting up something longer you're to go back to Kenan's description five or six years I think he was being over optimistic a war in this day and age even begin to seriously attract attention when it lasts longer than three years one election cycle measured in our time I think it's a real question but it's something where if you don't explain the value even if you don't explain the content because you're being defensive or you're supposedly respecting someone else's sovereignty I really don't think that that politically is the major priority I think you will continually have this problem let's just take Syria as a specific example as many of you know the French have been trying for what two and a half years to do a track one and a half track two discussion with all of the parties they cannot find a common basis for agreement and so we need strategic patience and we have to take it in the head and I mean in the head and in the heart for as long as it takes to find a basis on which you can even get a plurality of people to agree to what a future Syrian government or government system should look like sometimes you can't win but you have to prepare people to know that that's one of the solutions and so often I think in all of these this decade we have not done that and we seem to somehow forget that we haven't done it and say well it was just necessary and I think getting across the idea that it is necessary and it is what you're going to have to pay the political cost domestically the warm socks argument perhaps is silly but something equivalent to that but not every wish to end the suffering and the difficulty and the burden is going to be possibly solved if you in fact eventually want to have a peaceful solution that is stable beyond three years I mean would that be too a test to put together? Thank you I would like to start from Syria and then ask for specific experiences that you could draw from the Afghanistan case now a ceasefire or a peace process in Syria would have a country that does not look like a whole country anymore it would be a patchwork of consolidating territories with control of the Shiites the Kurds the Sunni groups if any with obviously an ongoing conflict with ISIL a movable target so to speak and now if we look at a situation like that and the possible international operations in that sort of conundrum you would have to of course tone down your expectations and then go so that was one of the recommendations and look for stability in cluster regions that could then actually agree to some sort of confederate or whatever coexistence now looking at Afghanistan how do you evaluate the decision to spread the responsibility of of ISAF over Kabul to the whole of the country step by step was that a smart idea or should one have done this maybe in a slower pace or should one have concentrated on certain cluster areas and how do you assess that but it comes to me when I talk about Syria there's parallel profiles of doing counter-insurgency fighting against extremist groups and trying to build up civilian structures on the other so these were two very very difficult aspects of the mission in Afghanistan that we could actually compare what one would have to do in a country like Syria I have three more questions on my list maybe if you try to keep them real short and then I'll just go through everything so maybe the panelists will kind of pick and choose which one you want to answer and we can make the end time my next is Karen Johnson thank you Karen Johnson American University I want to go back to the comment that was made about aid being sort of limited as a tool of policy it made me think of the growing movement against NGOs the anti-ngo's laws in Russia and the necessity of having these international organizations and donor organizations being involved in say something like future operations and maybe for Mr. Hammack and maybe Dr. Giesmann particularly do you see sort of a spreading a sense of a trend or what do you want to call it a growing sense of resentment against NGOs a possibility of some kind of restrictions on them again I don't have a sense of that but I would be very interested in your comments and others about what this might mean thank you thanks it's such a rich discussion it's hard to be short but I will try to be too quick asides I think that peacekeeping presence a big mistake was not having an actual peacekeeping force in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 so that was a mistake not you know the gradual expansion later was reactive is to some extent and obviously the US made that mistake by limiting ISAP within Kabul a huge mistake how on earth you know it just doesn't the number of international peacekeeping presence which would have been symbolic and it was a post-conflict situation at the time and was allowed to degenerate back into conflict another quick aside on the strategic patients just throwing out an example the best example I know is the Cold War over 40 years and obviously in the US at least it depended on a large degree of consensus between the main political parties on the threat from the Soviet Union and on generally with lots of differences of course but generally on more so there was that huge example of strategic patients which I'm afraid the invasion of Iraq probably was the last straw in terms of fracturing a political consensus I have to come back on sovereignty very quickly I think it depends a lot when a new country is being created or a country is breaking up like Yugoslavia or East Timoran then you obviously have issues of sovereignty do you have a UN government for a short period of time or whatever when it's an existing country it's a much more problematic thing and I think in Afghanistan the right decision was made where sovereignty was never taken over by some international body or occupying force and amazingly to me in the World Bank we actually found a legal opinion that that was the legal government the post bond agreement was the legal government of Afghanistan I think it was the right decision maybe there were many other mistakes made but generally it really depends and I would just think about Sri Lanka think about Rwanda think about the countries that actually won their civil war I would venture to say if there was an international bureaucracy that got a ceasefire in the US civil war the US might well be worse off today or there might not actually be a US so I do think you have to be cautious and sometimes it's an argument for non-intervention in the first place I mean let the Sri Lankans win their civil war right and last but not least our very confident and good head of the German delegation Magdalena Kirchner I'm Magdalena Kirchner with the German Atlantic Association here I just want to communicate my observations briefly and link into a Dominic set this morning when he asked about the domestic support and maybe add an 11th point to the 10 shared amendments that we heard before because if we learn that interventions are they're not quick fixes and there is no civil bullets so the day the Bundestag supports the mission doesn't mean the war's over the next day we have learned and everybody has agreed to that so interventions take long we have to have partners which we don't like and the goals that we can achieve are so limited that we aren't really sure whether there is a success so why on earth would someone support this how would you generate if you have to be honest how can you generate public support and so I would say the 11th thing should be always communicate the cause of non-intervention so what happens if we don't go and I think there is a momentum especially in Europe right now when we have the refugee crisis that people get to see what happens if we turn our backs on these conflicts if we don't go at some point we fail to contain them we fail to solve it then it will come to us and I think this is something which we always have to use in the communication strategy and say if we don't go this one might have and much worse than if we go and if we are not successful immediately. Thank you let's see let me start with Bill would you like to start? Just a few comments first of all on strategic patients a few years ago 2013-14 the World Bank did a transition analysis the donors had asked for that what they found that was that in 2024 even giving some conservative estimates for the amount of revenue extractions extractive industry might bring in by 2024 Afghanistan would still need some 25% of its non-security budget from the international community so that's what the development side of strategic patients is also there besides the institutional part it's going to take a country like Afghanistan a long time before they're not going to be dependent on foreign aid the other aid limited as a tool policy especially related to NGOs there are countries like Russia Ethiopia is another example of NGOs controlling in an effort to control NGOs and that's unfortunate the US at policy level diplomacy is pushing back very little they can do in Afghanistan my experience is the government worried about some NGOs competing with the government for service delivery the health NGOs is one example of that and the other thing we hear from others is that some of them see NGOs as corrupt and set up by individuals just to get donor money and that they don't perform and there's not the due diligence there's a small group of NGOs they get most of the money because of connections and the like and so those are real concerns in Kabul but so far the government has not talked about any kind of law changing of laws to control NGOs three comments the first one on strategic patience this is of course an issue that we are confronted with all the time working in on conflict transformation we had a project in Cyprus a couple of years ago and when I was in Nicosia somebody told me the first mandate provided by the UN on Cyprus was in 1964 that was for three months and now where we are now the person we met in Nicosia told us there is a comfort zone we live in it's quite okay so we take the advantages living in a divided city it has not only disadvantages so what I think is important to underline what you have said about the need of political process into which any military intervention or and this regarded as a peacekeeping mission must be embedded it must be convincing a political process otherwise there is a risk of a perpetuated deployment without any prospect the second one is I would reiterate what I said in my presentation with the trust at the local level I think engaging the local is an important complementary strategy to support state building process from below because state building understood only the top down process is not sustainable if people at the local level do not accept this kind of state as something that is beneficial to them third about the NGOs yes I agree with you due diligence matters are important we have done that with our engagement there I have not experienced so far any restrictions to our project in Afghanistan but I have to confess that we work only in the north so it might be completely different in the south or in the east yeah just few comments one on China I think there is a lot of hope that they will become more involved in terms of the peace process given their own interest and stability in Pakistan and not having instability spread into western China I would push back a little bit on the concept that they are doing lots in Afghanistan I think they are present she went to Pakistan and promised 46 billion in investments and assistance which who knows how much of that will materialize but it was a significant promise in Afghanistan I think the number is 300 million so given what China could be doing and given the level that they are talking about investing in Pakistan I think China could be doing a lot more on the economic front in Afghanistan and even on the mining thing frankly they put down little money to make sure no one else got the Mazzanek mine but you know conveniently they are being more respectful than ever of the archeological heritage of Afghanistan and they were lucky to have a nice fantastic Buddhist ruin on that site so they have not really done anything forward so I would actually argue that China could be doing a lot more in Afghanistan actually not only economically but even on some of the military assistance front and not probably in partnership with resolute support but there are other things in terms of non-lethal support they could be doing more on the military front on the domestic support issue I mentioned this last night in the manner of some of us what is striking me at one level is especially on the hill how much bipartisan support there is for our engagement in Afghanistan and in a town where there is not much bipartisan support for anything President Obama's decision to keep troops there was not controversial it was largely supported and if anything people maybe wanted to see more so again 14 years later there is strong bipartisan support for troop presence that is not I think reflected in public support and I think that comes back to the fact that our leadership does not speak out a lot to generate support explain necessarily why US is in Afghanistan and again linking it back to why we're in Afghanistan it's not a humanitarian mission it's out of self-interest and our national interests and I think that could be explained more clearly but I do take I am encouraged that despite all of this there is strong bipartisan support which my ideas maybe could even be turned strategic patience but one thing we haven't talked about unless it was talked about when I was out of the room I just wanted to put out there is elections I think it is important to try to maintain the constitutional order and I think it's already been bent and twisted in certain ways but it's still there and it's really intact and I think we all want to stop thinking about elections because they've been so painful but the issue of the parliament and its own legitimacy in Afghanistan is going to become an issue more and more I think for the future and I think it's something for the international community obviously it's first and foremost up to the government again to get us back together on some of these issues but let's not lose interest in support for democratic institutions and again we've had a disproportionate support I mean lots more support I think for the military institutions Afghanistan relative to civilian institutions and again you don't need to look too far in the region to worry about the consequences for democratic development moving forward a much stronger military institutions and civilian institutions and then just to end maybe to justify maybe the need for another conference because the last lessons are in conference and I think we again came back to the conclusion lots of these problems are identified lots of issues this report I and John mentioned these things have been there for 50-60 years as lessons so the question is not what we got wrong but why did we do it wrong and despite knowing we're doing it wrong why can't we fix it and I think that's the interesting research question understand better and that's the research topic for the Americans here in Washington and at our headquarters level what are the incentive structures that mean that we continue to hold on to doing things in a way that sets us up to lose lose wars at tremendous cost and so I just want to throw that out there again the question is why can't we actually change even when we've identified these lessons time and time again so another conference another conference but let me just make the comment that I think that any other conference ought to include a collaboration like this one has been because although it's greatly improved when we're just talking the bilateral here Germany and the United States we still have a ways to go and it's very it is good to see that the bilateral has improved to the degree that it has from 2001 and also with the Afghans and the Afghan people but I hope that if we do anything further that it pushes that cooperation and also across the coalition some responses first your question is this modest increase by about 180 soldiers by Germany in Afghanistan is that not a fig leaf no it's not it's very important because I believe that symbols do matter in politics they're extremely important much more important than people think and this to my knowledge is the first time that the Bundestag ever has changed the direction usually quite a few soldiers quite a few troops and then you reduce them over time that's the normal state of affairs now that you do it here the other way around calls attention to the fact that we need to do something it is don't fool yourself German public this needs extra effort and the other thing is that I think others it would have been impossible to persuade other countries to increase their numbers too without that when only when Chancellor Merkel said we are willing to increase our numbers then others you know what I'm talking about then others also followed the same direction second China I very much agree with you you see I think that's exactly one of the reasons why I think you always have to cast as wide a net as possible not only like China can a contribute but they can also create havoc you know they can create lots of problems in a totally different situation like it was the nuclear talks with Iran we learned that the hard way it started out as a German-British-French initiative then we got the US on board but we really put pressure on Iran only once we had also Russia and China on board and so you can't estimate to have the important players on board it is absolutely key I can really say this is not only for crisis management but in generally too carefully in your question strategic patients of course I agree as I've said before but politicians and that's the problem tend not to have it and I don't blame him they have to think in election circles we don't I mean as a civil servant you don't have to think that way so there is this tension between all the many many politicians I worked for and the civil servants that is something where the role of the public of civil servants that others comes in because politicians tend to leave as quickly as they can and therefore you have to really make the case why can't we leave and you see that's why I'm now working as a dean of a small college because you see trying to interest young people in a career in international organizations and the main message I have is and that's only I take only people who I trust have the endurance of a long distance runner I don't take others because in politics in general in foreign policy not only in crisis management you always go for the long haul this is true in Iran it took 12 years to talks and that is also will be true in the refugee crisis it will be true in integrating foreigners into German society so it's a general a general proposition Syria your question I think I repeat what I said before we have to create a situation where the Syrians are at peace with themselves and with their neighbors that's the thing we don't want to have the perfect and therefore we need the political process I talked about therefore the Vienna process is very important and I hope that we get more of an internal process also that most of the parties will participate I think one tool I would like to mention which has worked beautifully in many instances and that is the tool of more or less autonomy we have used that in many many complicated I still remember the very complicated talks about the future of southern Tyrell in northern Italy was only solved by autonomy I think in the question of Iraq I think the Kurdish thing can only be solved by a large amount of autonomy and so there are many many cases where autonomy is at least one tool we could use last thing your 11th commandment to show the cost of non-action I totally agree that in the beginning that works beautifully you know for instance Joschka Fischer when he had to answer the question should Germany intervene militarily in Kosovo he was swayed by Swabinica he was swayed by the fact that non-action would be even worse you had 900,000 people flying fleeing from the place and so cost of non-action was exorbitant very easy to convince Joschka Fischer then the problem is this wears down over time and there we come back to what I said before politicians think in election circles they think that non-action may be not the best option in the short run but in the long run ending action looks better and better looks awfully appealing you know let's bring people home and I think President Obama fully understood that and that's how he campaigned in 2007 and 2008 and I think it's a major reason that he did win so that's my comment so I have sympathy for it I'm just not sure it works in the long run I agree with class very much about the importance of capitalism and we see that also in the decision the recent decision of Germany to contribute forces to the effort in Syria as well and I think that's an important symbol to your partners and we certainly welcome the somebody used this in a debate the other day that the German contribution in Afghanistan is going up by 15% or something like that where ours is being cut by half that's an important symbol I don't think ours at the end will be cut by half I think actually it will remain where it is and we will discover that more forces are needed not necessarily combat forces not at all but in the train advisory and assist mission on strategic patients and communicating with our public as I said this morning I think that's the most important failing of this administration over the last seven years is that it has not for a variety of reasons wanted to explain to the American people what it is that we're doing in places like Afghanistan and why if it hadn't been for what I regard as the mistaken withdrawal from Iraq and the aftermath of that I don't know if that tenor of that discussion would have changed or not but it is now changed and there is a chance I think I sincerely think there's a chance to put that discussion in this country on a different footing and I hope that that will be done part of what we did in that paper that I discussed this morning there are copies of it out on the table there is we registered at the time that the president was still debating whether he was going to complete the withdrawal of American forces we began registering the broad consensus that exist in Republican and Democratic policy circles that that would be a serious mistake and that consent, that basis of support still does exist in the Congress it's probably a good thing right now that it's not really being debated in the United States because that discussion is moved on but it is there and I believe that if that consensus remains embedded in the broader discussion of what we need to do about Syria and other in other areas that we will be able to maintain that support what the United States is now doing in Afghanistan is crucial for the survival of Afghanistan but it's also even though it's a large effort it's still a very small effort compared to what we were doing even a couple of years ago somebody asked about whether it was a mistake to expand ISAF to the entire country in Afghanistan I think on the contrary the mistake was that we did it much too slowly we should have brought in a multilateral organized force I was ambassador to the U.N. at the time that this was going on I and my colleagues I have experienced and I argued from the outset that the follow up after the fall of the Taliban should be a NATO organized mission and it should have been deployed immediately throughout the country would have had a huge stabilizing effect and then I don't want to belabor this but if we had started doing in 2002 and 3 what we started doing in 2009 in terms of training the Afghan forces and focusing on real capability and security the history would have been much different I regret to say just as a point of fact I want to note because I keep coming across this the $46 billion the Chinese have put on the table in Pakistan are loans they're not grants so if that money gets spent they will be expected to be paid back they're soft loans I don't know what the rate is I want to answer Andrew's questions very succinctly about why don't we change what we're doing what have we done with our aid I think what we've seen I don't know about the period from 59 to 79 or whatever that first report is but I suspect your next conference if you do that will show the effects of giving people who are in the country for a short amount of time who don't know what they're doing and what they're going to do with it what a way to end this good thank you thank you all on behalf of all of the five partners who have been just terrific to work with and thank let me ask the audience to join me in thanking the panel up here now and I'd like to thank the other two panels because I think they were a really good lead in to looking at the other one and with that let me ask Jack Chains to finish us first of all let me thank you Gail because I think this was a real pleasure in putting this together I think it was very useful and successful exchange in the microphone and general it's time for another breakfast because this is where we began the process of trying to tease out what it is that we wanted to do and I think we've made a good start but everybody I think on the panel has said that there's more room here for work and I hope that we can invite all of you particularly the panelists but also those of you who've been in the audience so faithfully to continue down the road with us. I wanted to end with an Einstein quote but let me get to that after I say a few things of thanks. First of all Derek Button and he extended his stay for a year so that we could do this this has been very helpful I appreciate that we thank the embassy and we certainly thank Minister Fundalign for that Magdalena it's been a real a lot of coffee a lot of exchanges and a lot of good discussions and I think it was well worthwhile thank you very much for your good help and the crew that you brought with them with you all of the delegation from Germany some of whom are going back tomorrow Henning always good to have you back I had a funny story before about Henning was a refugee at the institute many years ago when certain volcanoes in Iceland went up and Henning we pitched a tent out in front of Dupont Circle and he was able to stay there for a while but it's always good to have you back you know where I'm connected with that institute like you are so I appreciate that Scott thank you very much I really appreciate the hospitality in this very humble abode that you occupy here thank you I'm not jealous at all that you have all this wonderful space you understand and Henning thank you so much for all the work that you put together for making all this work so speedily and so effectively we really appreciate it we have three people from the institute Park Nicholson who are here the entire time and helped Gail I think as much as anybody in the institute so thank you very much for your input and Rudy where are you here Rudy and Hans the two microphone vehicles and to some extent also people that have helped us put this together so thank you guys I really appreciate it so now the Einstein quote and I just looked it up and there's various different versions of it but I think I've got it here if you'll just permit me ah here we are we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we use when we created them in the first place so think about that as a way of getting to the question about what your question and what is it that we've learned how much do we have to go and where do you go from here I think there's plenty of room for more work I look forward to working with all of you and thanks again for everybody for staying with us for the rest of the afternoon thanks very much