 So first, I'm Melvin Levitsky, professor of international policy practice here at the Ford School and a former American diplomat, as is our speaker today. Let me first thank you all for coming and I want to thank the International Policy Center and the Center for Middle East and North African Studies of the International Institute for sponsoring this event. You know our subject, our subject today is Afghanistan. It's obviously a subject of some currency. We're now in our 11th year of our of the war in Afghanistan. Just a few comments, you know, from afar if one reads the popular press or watches CNN, Afghanistan looks like the mother of all messes. What the average, I think informed citizen probably reads or hears about is incident after incident of American or NATO troops committing acts of violence against Afghan or Pakistani citizens, civilians engendering the hate of the population of those two countries, of the corruption of the Afghan government, of the ineptitude and lack of readiness of U.S. and NATO trained Afghan military and police forces, of the fact that the the country's illegal production of opium and heroin may outstrip its formal economy and of the disaster that seems to await the withdrawal of foreign forces. So the average citizen I think could not help but be pessimistic about the prospects for the region. This is reflected in yesterday in the New York Times, a poll that shows support for the war in Afghanistan and support certainly declining in support for pulling out even earlier than what the president has said to be rising. So of course, there's a different there's a different narrative. There's a narrative that points to the progress it's been made in Afghanistan to the freeing of much of the country from the vicious rule of the Taliban, to the improved status of women in Afghan society and to a political process flawed, though it may be that promotes agreement and consensus necessary, possibly for future stability. And still others look to our history when the United States helped expel the Soviet Union Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1998 after a 10-year war and then promptly kind of turned tail, forgot about Afghanistan and we know what essentially the result was there, the Taliban takeover, protection for al-Qaida forces there and a source of terrorism and anti U.S. actions. So the problem for us is how do we make sense of these this complex series of currents and developments that make up the Afghan scene in order to determine the best course of action for our country and for the world for that matter. So to help us understand and to provoke our thought on what can and should be done, we have one of the country's leading experts on Afghanistan, a person who's not only studied Afghanistan and knows its history, but who has had a leading role in formulating and executing U.S. policy toward it and that person is Ambassador Raul Newman. Let me put a footnote in, a little asterisk. So I've known Ambassador Newman for a long period of time, I'll call him Ron for the rest of this introduction. But before I knew him, I knew of his father. His father, Robert Newman, was a fabled and storied American diplomat who by the way served as ambassador to Afghanistan himself for six years during during the late 60s and early 70s, and it was also ambassador to Morocco and Saudi Arabia. He had his father had an interesting story. His father was born in Austria, studied in Europe was imprisoned by the Nazis and spent two years in a concentration camp, was released, came to the United States, became a U.S. citizen. Before he became a U.S. citizen, he actually served in the U.S. Army during the Second World War and then got his PhD from where? University of Michigan. Wrote, writing a thesis which Ron described as rather drive it kind of interesting in a way and on extradition policy. He was talking about some Nazis that had been the issue of Nazis being extradited in the United States to be tried. Ron himself, another footnote, before he served as a U.S. Army officer in Vietnam, spent I think three months with his father in Afghanistan, which I believe was the first experience that he had in Afghanistan. So it's kind of ironic, isn't it, that things kind of developed so that he became ambassador after a long period of time. Ron Newman, Ambassador Ron Newman is now president of the American Academy of Diplomacy. It's an organization which I'm in as well. This is an organization of about 200 of us who are formerly presidentially appointed either ambassadors or in some cases high-level civilian people involved in foreign affairs, trying to promote foreign affairs, trying to promote resources, for the foreign affairs account, for foreign aid, for the running of the State Department, trying to work against things that are going on now, which are large cuts in the State Department and foreign affairs budget. He has been an ambassador three times in Algeria, in Bahrain, and finally, as I mentioned to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan from July 2005 to August April 2007. I should mention that although he was ambassador there for two years, he also has been back several times in 2010 and 2011, so his knowledge and his contacts are quite current. But in addition to that, Ron has always been one of the, always was one of the State Department's leading experts in Middle East affairs. He served in Baghdad from 2004 with the Coalition Provisional Authority and then as the Embassy Baghdad's principal interlocutor with the Multilateral Command. He was Chief of Mission in Manama, Bahrain, as I mentioned. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Near East Affairs in the late 90s. He was Deputy Chief of Mission in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Sana'a, and serving Sana'a in Yemen. So he's had a wealth of experience in the Middle East. And he has written a book which I recommend to all of you. It's a really good read and it's a book that recounts not only his personal experience there, but it's very thoughtful in terms of the issues that we are considering with regard to Afghanistan today. So I would, this is not a book sale, a sale session, but I would recommend this to everybody. I have a bookmark myself and talk to my class about it. In any case, we're so pleased that for the opportunity to hear Ron's views on Afghanistan and on a topic of such relevance today. So if you'll all join me in welcoming Ron to the Thank you. Thank you. Now does this thing work if I won't move away? Can you all hear? My wife has sometimes told me that when I become deeply thoughtful or at least I'm desperate for thoughts that my voice will fall. So if that happens and I'm warned the acoustics are not always great at here. So if you get to the point where in the back row you can't hear me, if you will wave or make some verbal gestures, I will endeavor to get my voice back up again. And you'll hear. Let me start by saying first of all that I speak clearly only for myself. I'm no longer in the government. You may notice some things that will make that clear as we go along. And nor do I speak for the American Academy of Diploma. So I'm speaking entirely for myself. Having said that, I do not pose as a completely disinterested observer of Afghanistan. I have spent a fair amount of time there as Ambassador whiskey said. It's easier to get the man out of Afghanistan than Afghanistan out of the man. I have a certain commitment to what we're doing. So I want to get that out in the Out in the open. What I want to talk to you about is essentially first of all my view of what happens if we fail Because when you look Popular mood is tired. No question. People want out. But that's Doesn't I mean that may tell you that eventually you'll have no choice But it does not tell you that it is wise judgment Just being tired is akin to your children telling you daddy. I want to stop the car Well, I got 50 miles to go to daddy. I want to stop the car. It is not an intellectual discourse It may be a correct view or it may not but it is not ipso facto proof of what you should be doing That needs to be judged against the cost of failure And against the probability of success I want to talk a little bit with you about what the current policy is because I find that the current policy Is very poorly understood by Americans And it is also very poorly understood by Afghans And since the Americans don't understand it, you know, you can be a little forgiving that many Afghans have a lot of doubts about what we are doing And then I want to talk to you a little bit about where we are Now because Afghanistan is a very complex place Almost any bottom line judgment made in simple bumper sticker sentences is wrong whether it's good or bad It is a place that is sufficiently complex that if you come to it with a fixed view Whatever that view is whether good or bad you can without question find the pieces that will support your view It's much more difficult to challenge one's own views constantly and try to come To a bottom line Whether I will clarify your thinking. I don't know but I can probably raise your confusion to a higher level of detail So to start off with I think one has to start with the cost of failure Which will itself be a matter of some dispute But it's the context in which one has to Look at costs costs and money costs and lives costs in The economy I see two Very large dangers One is geopolitical and the other is security to us The question first question is what happens if we leave what I would say prematurely that is prematurely is before Afghanistan can at least keep from losing on its own With some foreign support I think you get a civil war In fact afghans are talking more and more about civil war when I went back in 2011 I was really struck by how much the talk of civil war had gone up among afghans And that was sort of a new notion in march of 2011 by the time I went back in november again It was the watchword of every analyst who was paying attention to afghanistan In that civil war I believe it will draw in the major external Players pakistan iran india russia for the simple reason that all of them feel endangered by the potential of Their non supporters winning That doesn't mean that any of them will have the support or the force to win They'll just be able to keep the war going So that you will have a civil war that rolls on for quite a long time I don't think anybody knows how long But lebanon is an interesting example of a civil war that can go on a very very long time with external support But in the case of afghanistan, I think you have larger problems You have afghanistan bordering the new republics that came out of the former soviet union You already have an islamic movement. It was bekistan. You have had an islamic insurgency in tejikistan There is every reason to believe you will get those again whether they will be powerful or not. I don't know You have a potential for a regional destabilization Beyond that you have the role of pakistan pakistan Which could be a separate lecture, but I won't do that. I promise pakistan lives with a paranoid fear of india To say this paranoid is not to say it's wrong. You know paranoid's can have real enemies But in any event pakistan is desperately afraid of india And their view is that india will back the northern alliance forces and that pakistan will find itself surrounded by its quintessinal enemy And to prevent that pakistan will back forces that are friendly to them who many cases look like the people were fighting I pakistan is also facing a great deal of extremism within pakistan, which has grown and metastasized over the years I find it very unlikely that pakistan will do a good job of clamping down on extremism in pakistan while backing The near cousins of the same extremists in afghanistan in a war That is really alarming pakistan is a greater game in many ways than afghanistan that's Much larger 155 million or something like that has nuclear weapons, which is sort of a bothersome issue Um But it to say it is a larger game Is not to say that one can shift and deal with pakistan instead of afghanistan the two are interlinked In fact, it is the the main reason for the pakistani tolerance of safe havens Aside from the fact that they have some real military problems in dealing with it is that The pakistanis are conflicted their their view is that we will fail That we will leave afghanistan prematurely and that afghanistan will collapse and that they have to be ready for the war after the war They may be right. They may be wrong, but that is their geo strategic view and their policies come out of that view of their interest And too often we want to talk about pakistan or they are friend or they are enemy And they're a country with interests some of which overlap with ours and some of which don't And we've had a lot of trouble dealing with that we alternate between Everything is good and we're angry and we press We have to develop a little more articulated policy than that But if we want to understand why they do things then we have to understand that It's partly conditioned on their view of whether we will succeed or fail So what I see happening in a nutshell If we fail is that we have a very long civil war That it draws in outsiders that it worsens the extremism in pakistan and that After that the consequences become very hard to tell. It's just a really nasty massively destabilizing situation in a huge part of central and eastern asia south asia and The second piece though is That we are still at war with people who brought us 9 11 Who think they're at war with us It is difficult for one side to withdraw from a war if the other side doesn't agree that it's over It's really hard to do russians tried it 1917 the germans kept moving eastward that didn't work I don't know if there are any other examples of one side unilaterally deciding to quit a war There may be somewhere, but it doesn't work very well Elkina as a force is battered Uh, it is fragmented to some extent, but it has considerable capacities for regeneration And we have to live with the idea that if a group which believes they are acting in god's purpose Feels that they have now defeated the second superpower of the soviet union having fallen This is an enormous shot in the arm To reinvigorate them for the future How that plays out, I don't know, but I find it a dangerous prospect one which should not be lightly thrown aside So the consequences of failure are large now consequences of failure Are irrelevant if you have no prospect of success So that doesn't answer the question by itself And I don't propose that it does but it gives you base point to start from at least my argument secondly Is the question can we succeed and I would say First of all one has to say what is success? We have not been very clear about it. We have not been very good about the definition The bush administration success Grew in terms of what we desired in democracy And in the state but it did not grow with any proportion to the resources we put into the country Uh and that's maybe a place for a brief segue because one of the frequent discussions is you've been doing this for 11 years What does it take to tell you this is impossible? Why don't you people quit? And I would simply say that for The better part of nine of those eight and a half of those years we were not doing it We were playing at it with constantly inadequate resources We resourced just enough to keep from failure In fact the last cable that I wrote last telegram that I wrote From cobble in april of 2007 said we are not losing the war now. We could be losing in a year We have no resource for we have no margin for surprise Just to give you a couple of comparative figures about that earlier period When I went to afghanistan we had 25 000 troops there We had nearly 100 000 in iraq For comparison afghanistan is a slightly larger country than iraq it has a slightly larger population than iraq And it is a much harder operating environment because of the ruggedness of terrain iraqis mostly live in villages Which at least are cooperatively located on some kind of road Afghans tend to live in villages that are located way the hell and gone up some wadi that you have to walk up Uh, there's a much tougher operating environment and yet at a time when we already had 600 000 iraqis under arms as the iraqi army police security forces We were not yet at a target of only 200 000 in afghanistan 2005 it was very clear the war was going to get worse in 2006 I asked Recommended at that point a economic supplemental of 600 million which seemed like big dollars then seems kind of small now And after several months of bureaucratic conflict Out of the 600 million I had asked for we got 43 This didn't go very far So we didn't respond to the challenges. We were not building an afghan army capable of standing on its own We we were not building any of the logistics that allow them to stay in combat fire support artillery Medevac we didn't start doing those things until 2007 I'm sorry till 2009 we started funding some of them in 2007 Some of it was foreseeable. Some of it was not iraq was soaking up the oxygen The fact was that for a very long piece of this we have not had Our ends and our means in any kind of balance Now what is success? So what does success mean today with a more limited definition? I think it basically means an afghan army and security force that is capable of not losing It actually for ours that's not very enough for afghans But for our strategic purposes It does not have to win It has to not lose has to not let the country fall into civil war not let the taliban Retake large areas not let al-qaeda move back into base areas That means it will have to have a certain degree of economic foreign economic support Some probably some military support, but not a massive us presence That is sufficient to give time for the state to develop for the economy to develop. It's a very Limited goal We've defined the goal publicly though in terms of al-qaeda destruction or Degrading al-qaeda the problem with that goal is That statement is that it's a movement capable of regeneration You don't get the The battleship moment of surrender so if you have to deal with A movement capable of regeneration Then you have to have an army to keep it from regenerating if you have an army You need to have a state if you need a state you need a government the government you need an economy Oh dear. We're back into nation building, but we've defined nation building out as a primary cause So now we have a verbal problem that we we have The underpinnings of our policy which we no longer want to talk about in terms of its broader purpose That's given us a hang up. That's why I think it is simpler to understand Success and that's really where we are now as the ability not to lose to hang on for a while now To deal with the question of A chance for success. I have to take a minute to sort of walk you through the evolution of policy Briefly I promise And some of the confusion that it has brought about When the obama administration came into office We were on the point of losing the war And in the period of two different reviews one longer than the other The president made basically Three decisions two of which went in one direction and one of which pulled against it He decided to massively increase Economic support with its civilian presence and to considerably increase the military Those things stopped us from losing and the policy was to get to an afghan Army force to which we could transfer the security lead I want to come back to what security lead means in a minute The second decision was first to put a timeline on that said we're going to start the withdrawal in 2011 Later we moved that date to 2014 The administration of dates have caused a great deal of confusion they have led afghans americans others to Expect a much larger withdrawal And a much faster withdrawal than was ever intended the first date 2011 Was taken broadly by afghans pakistanis insurgents To mean we're going in 2011 it never meant that it always meant A limited withdrawal and a transition, but it was taken to mean a massive withdrawal So it caused a lot of confusion There's a quote i like by church. He'll said you could always trust the americans to make the right decision after they've tried everything else We did figure out we as a government that this 2011 was causing confusion it was causing confusion among our own forces And so nato and the united states came to agreement that the goal is 2014 for transition to the afghan security lead But even that has caused confusion because A lot of people think it means everybody's going home. A lot of people think maybe some of you think The 2014 is for afghanistan the equivalent of 2011 in iraq when all foreign forces left The fact that people think this I would say submit as evidence the fact the washington post new york times regularly write stories that say 2014 when all foreign forces leave I've even seen the washington post write that sentence in an article discussing how many foreign forces would stay after 2014 Which is pretty good pretty good illustration of chaotic thinking What does it actually mean first of all it means a Process it does not mean a light switch one day. We're in charge the next day. They're in charge It means a gradual handover to afghan forces It means changing our combat mission from First of all a very large direct combat mission to one in which our forces are backing up afghan forces It means a very large integrated advisory presence with afghans Secondly, it does not mean an end of us combat by 2014 Because in fact we began so late To build what my military colleagues would call the enablers That is the things that allow the force to support itself in the field to move itself to supply itself That we won't be done with that stuff before 2016 So we're going to be flying combat air support and we're going to be We may change the strategy, but the actual strategy means we will gradually shift the lead And we will still support it as the rest of their Force and their supply elements and medevac these things come online Talked to a friend the other day. It was down in helman said It was very impressed with the way the afghan company that he was with was fighting But they were using taxis for ammunition resupply and charter buses for medevacs They're not quite ready to stand on their own But that's a product of when we started building and funding the equipment to have a choice And the the media on this is not not very good So that When secretary panetta I don't think he was real articulate, but he spoke about 2013 as essentially a Changeover to an advisory mission and everybody thought ah, that means we're leaving faster Actually, it meant a reconfiguration of the force so that instead of having a lot of separate people running around in large brigades You have a much larger advisory presence integrated into the afghans Is what you're trying to do is the really critical element this year next to some extent is you're trying to get from quantity to quality Last year has been a building a huge building of the numbers And it's been quite successful But getting a lot of folk into uniform and having very basic training does not give you a quality force And what you have to go through to do that is Essentially push them to some extent into the lead But not over commit green troops So that they you get used up and break They have to have a certain amount of backup And that's the problem of the next year it will have bad days because I'm sorry to tell people who've seen a lot of movies that war is not an exact science The enemy is a learning organization also some days they out. Thank you some days. There are bad days They get smarter we get smarter So that you need room For failure as well This is the question of how much room you need for failure how much reserve you need Is the principal question that underlies the discussion of how fast you can afford to pull troops out in 2013 A lot of the public discussion now about pulling out troops in 2013 is Really based on what you need to keep from rushing to failure It doesn't mean you need every soldier but it needs a more careful examination. It isn't just about well, you can't get there So let's get them out more quickly In fact, I would say that if they President has really tightened up The margin of success with his decision to pull 23,000 troops out this year I'm planning my next trip out in May. I was Quite interested to discover that they're going to limit visitors very extremely in July in August and September because they're going to need all their air Mobile and fixed wing because they've got to pull 23,000 troops out which has to start quite a bit before the end date You don't just get 23,000 men and they all march down at the airport and leave in one day And they've got to do a lot of repositioning to continue the war Why I say this is tightening up It means in the middle of the toughest part of the fighting season of the year we're going to be doing all this repositioning Where are we now because when you come to this question where I argue we still have a chance of success We have to have some kind of scorecard And this is really hard Getting to the point we have now has taken longer that I think Either our military or civilian authorities portrayed And we are really now at the point where we are now testing the theory of transition What you're trying what a lot of people want to do is they want to cherry pick events on the ground To say it's a failure or it's succeeding Both narratives are fallacious Because you have examples of both What you really have are all the things we don't yet know that we're going to find out about It's a little like we're in the course, but we haven't taken the midterm yet and you want to make a judgment on whether you're going to fail Well, what I'm really saying to you is the judgment is premature. Let me give you some examples We have had we the united states particularly have had solid successes in kandahar and enhelment That's in the south and southwest Areas that you read about a year a year and a half ago marja battles are quiet Very little going on But we don't know whether afghan troops will succeed in holding those areas We know that there are areas that have declined in security in the east because the balance of our forces focused on the south We know that we're going to have to do some tough fighting in the east before we turn those areas over and we're going to have to do that Fighting simultaneously with troop withdrawals and repositioning But we don't know Whether that will succeed we have a plan We have a schedule for building the last of the force. We don't know how that will go so Many of the tests are the tests we're going to confront in this year I am not arguing that success is guaranteed But I am arguing That the testing of whether the strategy can work is largely a matter of the next year to 18 months That we will know a lot more in that period If in that period afghan forces simply aren't holding much of anything we turn over and we can't hey take our hands Take the training wheels off and take our hands off the back seat of the bike. We're failing If it works in a lot of places it has hope, but it's going to needs probably some tinkering But we have a public dialogue that wants to rush to decision before in fact Most of the testing of the strategy takes place I think there are A lot of positive signs, but they do not guarantee a positive outcome, and I'm not trying to argue that they do There is development in the afghan government But it's uneven you have ministries that have made very significant development And one has to understand that where we started in 2001 Two was a totally destroyed country I remember talking to the then aid director who told me about going to visit the ministry of education in 2001 Groping their way down Dark halls no power the windows all shot out the minister working With a kerosene lamp because there was no electricity and there was no computer And if he had a computer he couldn't have run it anyway You know that's gone to eight million kids in school about a third of them girls The ministry of health Still imperfect, but the one of the highest rates of mother child mortality in the country is coming down Ministry of finance has managed to handle this huge influx of foreign aid without having significant inflation in afghanistan For the economists among you that is a fairly considerable establishment I'm seeing government Filling out in the provinces Uh 2000 the winter of 2005 six we knew we were going to face a very large Insurgency insurgent push in the next 2006 we were desperate for Ways to counter get ahead of it. We didn't have a whole lot to work with And remember we were trying to add I think it was four additional qualified staff To the governor's offices in six provinces the foreigners were prepared to pay for it And it took us four or five months to fill those positions because we couldn't find people who were qualified afghans who were qualified The country was shattered Back about six months ago, they had a job fair in kandahar Which despite all the balance all the violence had well over 100 applicants for municipal and province jobs Who had many of them the requisite qualifications? districts I visited are getting filled out Is that adequate no Does it guarantee you that you will build a government? No All it tells you is that there is progress that the the image of nothing going right and it's all hopeless Is an exaggeration This is why I say that it is possible To reach my rather narrow definition of success But it is not guaranteed and we have Made it more difficult Both by our decisions on the speed of troop numbers And by the lack of clarity about our long-term policy So we've now have a policy of transition in 2014 We have no clarity. This is where you know i'm out of government About what you use we intend after 2014 The last time I spent March and april November both I spent about an hour each time alone with president carzai I spent time with his most vociferous political opponents The one point on which he and his worst critics had complete agreement was we have no idea what you the united states intend after 2014 Now That's a problem in itself But what you have to understand is what it sets up in afghanistan Because if people think If people have to survive and they do We are thinking okay, you know, we got an election this year. We'll have a new administration We'll work on this stuff. We don't have to have this clarity yet. You know, we got that's a that's two congressional elections My my god, that's really a double long term Afghans are thinking about how do I survive? And they have now 30 years of violence to condition them to the fact that hope is not a plan And so If They have to think about this with a lack of clarity they make assumptions their assumptions are always the most dire because that's what you do When you plan to survive So if you then make the assumption the foreigners are going to bolt before we have something that can hold You know one tendency is well i have to steal more because i'm going to have to run So that the lack of clarity in fact Actually pushes from more corruption Second is that if you think you're going to have to fight and serve if you're not planning on running and you're an afghan politician And you think you're going to stay in the country. What do you do you tighten your links with your ethnic and tribal brethren that will fight with you That's a pattern we've seen in many countries when there's insecurity it moves away from national cohesion and toward tribal identities ethnic identities Well, we're trying to build a national army And we're actually doing reasonably well at it But when people start thinking this institution might not be ready I got to tighten my ties at that point It really doesn't matter if the person you have to depend on for security is a nasty corrupt warlord Because if that's the only way you're going to stay in power or stay alive Then you're going to have to excuse an awful lot of other behavior if you know That you got something else to depend on that's less necessary But because we won't clarify our own intentions when we want to talk about cleaning up the government What an afghan is hearing in many cases is I know I can't survive without these people around me unless you're going to stay and you want me to fire them But you can't tell me if you're going to stay And then we wonder why is this dialogue not persuasive? So The lack of clarity in our own policy is in many ways pushing against Things we want to build in terms of nationalism and identity But You know, it's not one tendency. There are as I said a number of positive things going on There is a great deal of progress in the army, but again it's It's an early testing phase And there are I don't think we have a very good system of reporting On what we are doing with the afghan military so that the public is faced with drawing conclusions from a morass of anecdotes with no cohesion And so you get the guy who says I saw six units and they're all rotten And the other person who says I've worked with these guys and they're good And it's a morass of detail and it's hard to tell I've seen enough to feel that this is possible. So Without going on and on we have A situation in which my view which some of you may choose to argue with Is that we pay a very serious price for failure There is no Plan b that is worth a billy dam There is a policy of transition Which may fail But where we are only now in the period where we will really test and see whether it can succeed or not And we have serious interest. It is in my view worth carrying forward the test. That's the basic There's lots of other things to talk about. So let me stop there and take your questions. Thank you Let me just i'm going to be the recognizer here He's the he's the referee But i'm i'm sure that uh ambassador new is also willing to you know, he has significant experience in north africa as well And i know eric spring issues like that around people's minds in case we didn't have enough here We want to take advantage of the breadth of his knowledge and and experience. So i think we can You certainly will agree to open it up to other questions as well, but i can always say i don't know If you'll hold up your hand And we'll begin students and others in the community Hold up your hand. Do i see any? We've answered all your questions as it may please I understand. Could you make some comments on that? There was something that came out just today. I think let me repeat I'm going to try to summarize questions so everybody can hear and also they can pick it up So the basic question was about status of women what's happened Uh First of all there has We've come from a point where they were being stoned in the football stadium There is a good deal of progress On the progress side of the ledger you have obviously you have girls going to school You've gone from no girls legally in school to about a third of the eight million odd Women you have a ministry of women's affairs you have Uh a parliamentary and a provincial government set aside of 25 percent being women Many of them elected because of the set aside some of them out polling their male competitors They they would get into parliament anyway Uh, even if you had no set aside for them very Some very very dynamic afghan women that i know in the parliament other places Uh Then you have all kinds of problems you have problems of women Getting put in jail because they run away from abusive husbands. Do you have issues of Uh, you know women and girls being married off to subtle opium deaths This is a very mixed picture as As we work on this when we talk about the policy side And you also have by the way you have a huge split in urban and rural women and how they live and how they conceive of their rights and The culture it's a lot easier to make changes In the urban situation that doesn't have the heavy tribal hand It is extraordinarily important as we move on this To be very careful about how much social change we try to impose on afghanistan if there is one Theme that runs through the last hundred odd years of afghan history It is the reaction the negative reaction When governments try to impose social change at a faster rate than people will accept That was a large part of the overthrow of the government of King Amanullah in 1929 It is again a piece of the whole The history that people kind of forget that there was nearly two years of an afghan communist rule Before the soviets ever invaded they invaded because the afghan domestic communists were failing A large part of some of their failure was because they were busy killing each other in Kabul But a large piece of their failure was that they tried to impose massive social change on the villages Some of which was about women some of which was about education Some of which was about land reform where they didn't they took land away from the landlords Which caused one political problem, but they didn't put in the Seeds and loans and things the landlords delivered so that they farmer had less capacity to actually farm the land Even though he owned it so it was a complex of a lot of issues But they were trying to make a lot of social change and that produced an enormous amount of rebellion Which frankly was about to bring down the domestic communists before the soviets came in Soviets also tried to impose a great deal of change Including on women's education and on economic reconstruction Some of which was helpful and much of which also triggered reactions That does not mean one should simply live with the most medieval aspects of society But it is a caution flag about how much he tried to drive My conclusion out of that is that we need to be solidly behind Afghan women but not in front of them That when when they can be when afghan women who want to develop can be labeled as Leading a foreign charge Then they are discredited and it is enormously difficult for them to succeed So they have to be able to move in an afghan context, which we should support And then we have to be very careful There's the question comes up about if we leave what do we do about women? Well, frankly if we leave prematurely, we will do nothing I don't care what we say. I don't care what pious pronouncements we make if we are no longer a player We will have no influence over what happens You can decide to care about that or you can decide not to care about it But if you think that you can leave afghanistan and have some Influence because you put something on paper or have a commitment that will do something about afghan women You have been smoking some of the local product So we need to be I don't know, you know people will have to decide is that a policy goal for which you would kill people and have Americans die or not, but it is part of the mix of the consequence of leaving early my question Comment here Discussions here at the university in the south asia study department and others over the past ten a year and There are three points that I I raised that they're very clearly obvious one is the the afghani society Over the centuries and whatever that area did always have been a very decentralized society Like 60 square miles, you know In the next 60 square, they're all independent Operators and all this nature of that nature of the land And as you said, there are no roads connected. There are paths through the fields and whatever donkey Horses or whatever they use for transportation And the second point is the You know the people have lived there in a very strong belief in the religion and cultural and The way the men and the women have had their relationships is based on those beliefs and then now Change has brought the interests of pakistan, which appeared about 60 years ago and The on the east's west side you have iran and they've changed drastically from the shah to the current situation And they all have these vested political interests and We I mean americans we were there to catch Osama Milan that was the one We heard like at 9 11 we had that was our goal to catch him and kill him and get out Slam dunk, you know, that's what we heard So now we are in a situation that we are Trying to manage those conditions in our way of life It's like looks like we're imposing something which they don't have they've never been used to my question is How realistic we are assessing the situation that we can make the new System not to lose Is there Let me try to distill there The basic question was how realistic are we in what we're trying to decide at afghanistan? Particularly with a view to the centralization many would say over centralization of the afghan government the history of Afghans as being independent and the regional Interests in the place of course some of these things pull in different directions If we to go back to my earlier point if we do not succeed in leaving something that can hold Then the regional interests are very likely to pull a place apart Merged with domestic fighting for power So it's a lot easier to talk about how hard it is than to figure out how to get out Without a failure On the question of decentralization I think there are two things to understand Historically when americans talk about decentralization we think of a kind of cascade of authority And how authority is distributed In afghanistan it was actually a parallel system of government Central authority was responsible for certain things tribes local government Is responsible for other things so a murder on the highway is a matter of the state's responsibility For transit and the murder in the village is a private matter to be solved by tribes It's not something the state necessarily have authority for The system is unquestionably Overcentralized although I would say that that is much more a function of what afghans wanted at the time of the Loyal jerga than it was a foreign imposition a lot of it is an afghan reaction To the chaos of the war years But the centralization exceeds what the government can do The trouble is the old decentralization or parallel government Relyed in large part on very powerful tribal units And social cohesion and both the social cohesion and the tribal units have been badly damaged and broken By the years of war and you have the growth of the various militias led by militia leaders Warlords as we sometimes call them So it's very difficult to decentralize without decentralizing back to the same people that you're most worried about for corruption and misrule I think we have frequently had an unrealistic concept I think we're getting a lot more realistic, but we've come rather late to that Personally, I feel that one of the worst things we have done in afghanistan And we continue to do it is our short tours of our personnel the one year People turn over and you go institutionally stupid once a year So that the learning I don't mean just military. No, I mean my embassy turns over you know turned over Mostly every year when I stayed to offered to stay a third year. They didn't accept that my deputy stayed too But a lot of people stayed one year This is not a country where you learn even a piece of it and a job well in one year And that tends to make us erratic change course get Aided with new ideas What has produced now a growing realism is the pressures both domestic political pressures in this country and the military pressure is the Fact that we're going to have to transition that diminishes our grand goals Sometimes maybe not so good, but often maybe to more reality Um, but it's still a problem. It's still a problem in our domestic debate Between explaining more limited goals and explaining what you can't do I think now if you get an army that can stand on its own with foreign It'll still need foreign financial support and some troops, but with a much lower level of military support That that is a that is a more realistic goal. That's not building a whole country It's building the space in which the country can continue to develop But it's a much messier goal Thank you. Thank you If I heard you correctly at a critical time, we only got uh, was it 43 billion? Or approximately there and the requested going in million million. Okay Okay, change that dynamic, but but If if what would the american public have gotten for that the request that was about 600 million In other words at that critical point in time, what would that have bought us in terms of a return On investment Yeah, no fair fair fair question. Um Of course It's harder to it's easy to say what we want it to do It's a little harder to say honestly whether we'd have succeeded at it. I tell you what we were looking at doing with the money Part of it was we wanted to go we wanted about 100 million of it would have flowed into our various Aid people in the provincial reconstruction teams in about 23 different provinces at that point We had almost no money for them. The military was funding Short-term projects. We had a lot of aid money in national projects But very little ability to work with our civilians in the countryside I particularly wanted some of that flowed into the north and the west where the areas were calmer where we could work more I felt that we were neglecting areas where we could make a difference and Bring more we were confusing common stability And we needed to work on building government authority in stabilized areas where we were not in the middle of an insurgency Um a second a big hunk of it was uh would have been targeted to roads and power because Two of the biggest they're two of the biggest bottlenecks to economic development in afghanistan Without roads you can't move crops to market There are areas in afghanistan where right now farmers have switched off of poppy Because they can actually make more money Growing vegetables because they can do two or three different crops in the course of a year poppy's a single crop for the year The cumulative value is more but they've got to have enough They've got it water too, but they've got to have ability to move the crops to market lagman First year I was there. They told me that somebody told them grow tomatoes and everybody had thought that was a great idea And they threw 50 of the crop away because the road was so bad. It was mush by the time you got it to market so We felt that roads were one roads were important for getting government authority out for getting crops in and for military movement as well The third element we were really looking at strongly was power because Afghanistan has some uh hydroelectric power And we were developing a line to bring power down from the uh from the north from wasbekistan and Turkmenistan But a lot of afghan afghanistan runs on diesel power with fuel supplied by trucking it in from pakistan and iran The difference was about six fold in the price of power So that afghanistan grows tomatoes and it imports tomato paste It grows wheat and it imports flour and If you were going to begin to create even minimal increases in employment You had to have cheaper power to do it Also, if you were going to have any success, we haven't had a lot in poppy reduction You have to deal with the problem of landless farmers poppy is very intensive labor intensive And a lot of people make their living for the year out of what they make in the poppy harvest But when you move to say wheat or variety of other crops, they're not nearly as labor intensive All of a sudden you have a whole big reservoir of unemployed males Who have no way of staying alive. So if you want to deal with those You've got to be able to raise other employment prospects. I mean, there were other pieces, but those were the big elements My name's uh, haven't out on my first year MPP here I was wondering if you could extrapolate on the sort of activities that the us and afghanistan is doing in order to create a sense of Buy-in or ownership for the afghanis for what will ultimately be their country furthermore What additional opportunities you see are available to create that sense of ownership I think the most important question of buy-in is the question of creating some sense of certainty about what we are going to do Because we are such a large presence That it's extraordinarily difficult if not impossible For afghans to formulate a vision for the future Without knowing how we play in that if we're out they've got a totally different situation from if we're in and The lack of clarity is one of the largest problems to creating buy-in A lot of buy-in has to come from the afghans Uh, I know within the army within the police. That's a much harder wicket by the way um I think there are limits to how much foreigners can create afghan buy it I think at the end of the day Afghans will have to create afghan buy-in themselves And if you if they don't have it if people won't fight for their country and serve it eventually they will lose it But the biggest piece we can do is some clarity about where we're going to be and what we intend to do and not Be jerking the issue around constantly You've mentioned a few times, uh, how the american people feel about um about how we're tired of our presence in afghanistan But what about the afghani people? How do they feel about a continued american presence? The you know a lot of the initial thought was afghans are tremendously xenophobic They're going to automatically be against the forters that did not prove to be true In fact, I think for overwhelming majority of afghans. This was looked at my god This is the last chance for a future for this country. We'll never have another one over time We're beginning to wear out the welcome Now our ability to assess this is limited There are a lot of opinion polls I have a limited regard for what opinion polls in afghanistan tell you But nonetheless, you know Assuming that the flaws are basically consistent so that maybe they tell you something about trends what you see is a gradual decline in Favorable ratings, although it's huge differences different parts of the country is still I think overwhelming in the of projects usbex Hazara's Much more divided the push tunes, but not uniform Another way though of Sort of looking at this question is to compare what happened with the soviets and what's happening with us There is no comparable sign that the taliban are massively loved They're massively feared There is an expansion of the rebellion although a lot of it coming in from the sanctuaries in pakistan But there is no evidence at all to indicate that you have a massive popular uprising against the foreigners You got a lot of fear about the foreigners leaving and you get people that are getting tired of the foreigners People that are wondering what the foreigners will you know, whether it's worth having the foreigners Whether you'd be better off to even have a taliban or a haqqani victory Rather than endless fighting, but you don't see any groundswell of Huge support you you see some In the south you had seen some in the south And the southwest particularly Although much more tribally based than than intellectually based around an ideology I'm sort of reminded of a story a canadian friend told me he was out in the village and he was talking to a villager This was an area that had had a lot of fighting over the years and And the villager said but you know, we still welcome you and the canadian said well, you know, yeah, I'm here But I'm you know here in my battle rattle my You know my armored vest and my gun and all my Equipment and that's what you would say And he said well, no, you know when we felt differently with the soviets you could tell the difference um You had a massive popular uprising you don't have that so I would say we still have A margin with which to work But it is fraying it is declining year by year. It's another reason That I think the transition strategy makes sense whether the timing makes sense or not We can't neither in terms of our own domestic support nor in afghanistan. Can we do this war forever? That's very clear The question is can you transition in a measured way that gives you the best chances for success and the least probability of failure within sort of broad compass or Do you try to rush to failure by moving faster than is conceivable? your perception of pakistani policy toward But you you mentioned that the indians and the russians are Have a spake in the game. Don't forget What what is your perception of their their policies or their goals? Is china a player and what chance do we have to influence those policies? Okay, question was regional policy about just pakistan china iran quick tour quick tour around the neighborhood um China interested But very cautious have come in for economic goals have not yet Shown a desire. They're not hostile They've invested in three billion dollars in the copper mine, but they're not doing a lot in aid big question with the chinese is whether they will Run their economic programs in ways that build up the afghans the state the capability or will do it simply as a extraction industry with a lot of chinese russians Almost schizophrenic Because on the one hand, they really don't want a return of the taliban and islam extremist sunni islam that Has a potential to expand into what they so charmingly called the near abroad In the tejikistan turkbanistan and kezbekistan On the other hand, they really don't like a big american presence sitting there Kind of in their backyard And so they they sometimes have a certain dualism of policy, but over time they have become They're helping more rather than less in terms of allowing transit of lethal equipment, which they weren't doing Rail shipment of non-lethal equipment into afghanistan big debt relief So there's some back and forthing But they don't want to they don't want us to stay forever, but they don't want us to lose And they've got a big drug problem that comes in from afghanistan and they don't like it The iranians It's a little hard to say because we don't talk to them I did talk to them when I first went there and then that authorization was rescinded I think it's important to do a kind of contrast and compare very briefly with iraq Because the iranian goals are to the best i can analyze quite different iraq has always long time been a threat to iran They viewed it as a threat in the days of the shah i was consul in tebrize in iran and i had About 20 percent of iran in my consular district. They were in 1974 1975 every year the iranian army Would drill the iraqi invasion the retreat to consolidation the repulse of the invasion Iran sees a potential threat a major strategic issue there. They do not see a comparable threat in afghanistan. They worry about us They worry about how we might use afghanistan against them they have There has been a gradual but certain increase in the provision of arms To insurgents that have come out of iran. They it's always a little difficult to say that they are absolutely government Sent but then there's a little too much to say that they're not On the other hand, they haven't sent nearly as much Or nearly equipment that is nearly as sophisticated as what they sent into iraq So I think with iran one has to say why are they not doing things they could do as well as what they are doing To my mind the answer is they're keeping ties warm that they might use against us if we come to blows But they are not seeking to dominate Afghan politics the way they have Saw it to have a dominant role in iraqi politics. So it's it's a manageable situation, but a difficult one The indians are very worried about afghanistan. They have given a considerable amount of economic aid Which is you know important considering that india is not a wealthy country Building several roads building the new afghan parliament They would like to be more involved militarily. We've tried to keep them out because it sends the pakistanis up the wall If the indians are involved militarily The underlying question is can one build a kind of neutrality pact In the region afghanistan's longest period of peace which lasted nearly 70 years Was a period when basically the foreigners stayed out except for foreign aid And I think this is part of a long-term solution But to have any kind of neutrality agreement You have to have an afghan government that can maintain a modicum of stability Because if you have afghans inside fighting for control, they will draw in Foreign support and as soon as one comes in somebody else comes in to block that So that you can I think we should be talking more about regional arrangements I think we should begin talking about it now, but I don't think we should have any expectation of a near-term Solution because I don't think you have the pieces in hand I'm glad you're doing this So you stressed a few times the lack of clarity in the policy on the side of the U.S. government So I was wondering if you could share a little perception of what are the barriers for the government to come to some clearer policy I know that's probably good I don't really know the answer. I mean Some of it is us, you know, we have sometimes a short-term focus some of the abilities of american policy making But some of it goes to what the president chooses to talk about I mean for instance before The first speech with the 2011 deadline I was on a call You know probably with a hundred others of the lighthouse background and what the president was going to talk about And they were clear this, you know 2011 is the beginning of a withdrawal of forces. It could be slow We're going to be there for a while. It's tied into various other things. It's conditional And those themes of explaining the policy were carried out by secretary clinton by then secretary of defense gates by admiral mullen by general mccrystal But when the president spoke he spoke basically about a date And that's what people heard But why the president chooses To speak more early. There are a variety of things one can attribute to his motivation, but I don't know the answer The question was more detail on how we try to coordinate with the afghan government and with tribal leaders and others on nation building efforts Who let's see if I can do this in a way that provides Some detail without simply swamping you a little bits and pieces and leaving you totally confused There is an effort to move to To a goal of having 50 of our aid flow through afghan government mechanisms Which is part of strengthening government This is a little difficult to do for a variety of reasons, but there's some movement on it There's a lot of experimentation going on now about trying different things to see which will work There has been an enormous effort, but I'm not sure of its value in building provincial and district government and the part of general mccrystal's plan was What he called key terrain districts. There were 80 something and 40 of them were in the first year and We've fielded district support teams, which were a mix of civilians and military various government cabinet departments Very mixed bag as to what they have achieved some places quite a bit some places probably less Probably too much self rating That makes it hard. I wish we would do A comprehensive study of what we've done in the last year to try to differentiate where we have had success in district support teams where we have not where success is defined in can be defined in terms of Building something that will outlast the team as opposed to something that is dependent on the team being there and try to draw some Stronger lessons learned, but I don't see us doing that yet We have tried to work at a variety of provincial and district levels to strengthen their local government With these district support teams with more aid people with people from the department of agriculture justice and various ones It's a very mixed picture. It's pretty easy to be critical about parts of it Some of it has been helpful We have not tried to engage directly with tribal leaders per se Because ultimately that's something the afghan government has to do There is a very interesting program on which the jury is really out, which is a program Directed toward reconciliation Uh Program for reconciliation and peace ap rp It's had a lot of it's an effort to Create a structure and the resource local government afghan local governments in order to attract people to come in out of the cold and reintegrate It has had a lot of teasing problems. It's been very slow to stand up It's been heavily criticized as not having taken enough fighters off the battlefield A lot of questioning about whether the people who have been reintegrated were really in the uncertainty to begin with On the other hand, there is another argument That says look if you provide resources and a structure and allow afghan government To pull people in it doesn't really matter if you're pulling in people who were Criminals or just excluded or insurgents. It is part of a larger state building program But I would say the jury is really out on whether that would work I guess the other thing before you know not to keep on going on endlessly with programs Is to remember that all of these things are a function of about the last two years These were all these are not programs. We've been working on for 10 or 11 years These are programs that we decided to resource and create at the beginning of the obama administration And that there is a there's a time lag, you know, we we tend to do policy We're very policy focused and we live especially the washington live where you sleep eat policy except for brief moments of gossip and career destruction And and so there's an unconscious sense that a a decision taken as an action completed And in fact many of these things have very long lag times So that the decision to have a foreign a civilian increase which many military criticizes insufficient It took the better part of a year to get them there Decision to get to increase money then you go to the congress then the congress votes Then you have to decide what the congress actually did you have to release the money to the field It has to go down to your programs many of these things have a year or two year lag From when you decide them to when you actually get them operating And then of course, we're already on to the next policy. So you just kind of step steeply ramp up and You're going down the other side So when I said that there are a lot of these programs and when I can't really tell you how much they've achieved It's part of the newness of that effort So you made a very strong case where I need to stay in afghanistan and the consequences of failing My question is is the only answer through militarizing afghanistan and creating this army Then I asked the question because You can easily imagine by not dealing with these deep social issues in afghanistan But by creating the strong military can very much You know likely end up in a situation like the shah of iran Mubarak in egypt where a military is controlling and really the same Negative issues that have driven the whole air of spring Is there no options or opportunity to do this by demilitarizing afghanistan like japan and germany after world war two were built Question in case everybody didn't hear it Militarization of afghanistan, which I've talked about has a lot of risks Is there no way to demilitarize as we did in germany and japan? For that kind of demilitarization you have to win the war first I mean we demilitarized there after we totally won a war and crushed the opposition We're not going to get there It is there is a risk And I devoutly wish we had worked harder and earlier on a lot of institution building and social building earlier I do believe we have to be conscious of those things But I think our time is now getting limited For a made you know for what we will do with the wall american forces are there And I do not believe that we can create good governance And much better economy in a very short run Right to me the militarization which comes Militarization that is a quality military that can work comes with The idea that that buys you the time For social transformation and development doesn't guarantee it'll happen It's simply that I believe you can't get there if you can't buy the time The biggest risk to militarization is either civil war I suppose you could eventually get a military coup But we got to be a little more unified than they are now Um I don't think that'll happen For a number of years while we are there in a declining presence And that gives you a number of years to also solidify the army and the army is multi ethnic and multi tribal it is not It has a problem that it does not have enough southern push tunes. It's about 42 push tune in the army Uh the tactics are a little over represented as ours. There's becks a little under represented, but it is it is cross confessional. It is not single single ethnic units um But gelling that is going to take some time so The danger is there. I think we can mitigate it by the amount of training we do Uh, not just military training, but I mean civilian and economic training But I don't think I don't think there is a way Of bringing about rapid Governance and development at least there is no example I know in 60 odd years of post-colonial development where you have had a rate of change in governance or economics Equivalent to what people would like to see you know in the next two or three years as I understand progress and The only the military is much higher than is with the police Which is also an important component of this That is absolutely true Two basic reasons one which is still very structural is police is local and police is part of politics And the second is also Army we took everything apart. We started to build a new army from the ground up police we basically said, you know, whatever's there is the police and No, they were basically people's militias that came to rest in various places They were in no way a national police and then we didn't really get into it. I mean 2000 The first 200 million dollars 200 million Which is not a big sum that we spent on military equipment took me six months to get authority from the Comptroller of the department of defense to move that money from the military program to the police program In 2005 we didn't go into serious police equipment till the 2007 budget Um There are improvements in some areas. It's very mixed bag I won't say more about it now for time last question in the back For this conversation in the wake of drone attacks and The incident on the border with the Pakistani troops America is surpassed by samples India in terms of unpopularity in Pakistan was quite an achievement But But with The parliamentary committee on national security in Islamabad saying we need a radical shift from what our relationship has been with the united states Uh, it looks inevitable that that relationship is going to change. Uh, and we had a an important conversation with ambassador Howard Schaefer saying it's going to become more business oriented Someone else said it was going to become more transaction oriented But all of that in any uh, in any case it has implications for native supply routes It has implications for regional cooperation. How do you think, uh That relationship relationship would be reconfigured and what are the implications for Yeah, I know can I think about this? Any answer I by the way, if anybody couldn't hear the question was how is the relationship with pakistan going to be reconfigured Um We're waiting to see what the parliament will do So to some extent i'm peering into a glass that It is hampered by the fact that I think neither country understands well the other Nor do I think either country at senior levels is making a very strong effort to understand the other And I wish that would change but I doubt it will um We are Bound together we have interests in common Which I think the united states recognizes Without fully drawing conclusions. We do not want to see pakistan radicalized. We do not want to see the state fall apart Then we have very strong Issues in opposition to each other. My guess is that we will continue to rock along very awkwardly um We will not accept no Bombing no attacks inside pakistan because american people are getting killed by forces that come out of the sanctuaries And much as pakistan may hate that We will continue to strike them Question will be whether we strike intelligently less intelligently how bad it gets pakistanis have actually been fairly I think one has to sail but they don't like it They reacted quite negatively to having to come out in the public But the most important transit of pakistan has not been interrupted which is the overflights Because we have very limited almost no capacity to bring lethal supplies in by the north although that's now opening up and changing and almost every bullet rocket gun that Not gun we all guns too that we use in afghanistan comes in by air over pakistan um pakistan never interrupted that ship but it just doesn't like to talk about it Uh, it interrupted the land carters, which makes the war more expensive But we've had a considerable development of shipment from other ways So that's Little less critical My guess is we will continue to bounce up and down badly But probably not come to a total rupture uh I think the government of pakistan particularly the military which is perhaps more important in this question than the civilian government Recognizes that as difficult as the united states is as a friend. You don't quite want them as an enemy If you don't like drones try b 52s We're we're unlikely to just accept losing the war because of pakistani hostility I wish both countries could find a better balance in their relations But it's a very it's a very tough one to find and it is beleaguered by the public opinion on both in both countries Which is highly critical um But I think we will probably tend to rock along in a very uneven awkward fashion I could describe other ways one might do it But your question was what does it likely to look like I think it's likely to look pretty messy And on that clear explanation