 Good morning. Thank you all for coming. I'm Steve Morrison, I'm Senior Vice President at CSIS, and I head the Center for Global Health Policy at CSIS, and very proud to be part of this effort with my colleague Johanna Nessith in organizing this. We're delighted that today, Tony Cordesman, our colleague from CSIS has agreed to come and speak with special focus on role of food security in Afghanistan and stability there. Tony holds the Arleigh Burke chair and strategy at CSIS and is also a national security analyst for ABC News. He's familiar to many of you, I am sure, for the wide range of work that he has done over the years on security matters. He's an authority on energy on U.S. strategy and defense plans, defense programming and budgeting, NATO modernization, China, the Middle East, Afghan and Iraq wars, and on and on. And his constant ability to stay ahead of the curve on many of these issues and produce very insightful and forward-looking analyses. And we were successful at engaging Tony and asking him to put some thought to the issue of food security in Afghanistan, which remains, as you'll hear from Tony, a vital dimension, but one for which there are special problems of data and for which this is one dimension of security that, in some respects, is underappreciated and under-acknowledged in the discussion. So Tony, thank you so much for being with us. Tony's going to speak for a period and then we will move to some comments and questions from the audience. There's a microphone towards the rear and there's a microphone over here. So I would just ask when we get to that portion of the program that you just rise and come to the microphones, identify yourself and be very brief in offering a comment or question. Tony, thank you so much. Thank you, Steve. I think that probably if you look at the headlines, the focus on Afghanistan still tends to be on the tactical side and on conflict. But in shaping the new strategy we were forced to spend at least as much time on how did we secure the population? How did we create a structure where people could feel secure? And the strategy which is called shape, clear, hold, and build will depend for its success at least as much on the build side as it will on the tactical side. I think it's also important to note that while Afghanistan is a very dramatic case and one very urgent to U.S. policy, the interrelationship between food, agriculture, and conflict affects a very large part of the world, and it is not that unique. Certainly when you look at the numbers they are particularly striking. Right now without the World Food Program, something like 70% of the people of Afghanistan would face a serious food crisis. About 9 million of those people depend on the World Food Program basically for day-to-day food. Another 7 million depend on partial food depending on the season. Without this, the fact is that a heritage of some 30 years of war, civil conflict, and crisis would have created a disaster. And as it stands you have a situation with one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, a life expectancy of around 44 years, and a case where something like 40% of the children in the country are physically suffering from malnutrition to the point where surveys show they're underweight. And the surveys are conducted in the more stable, more secure parts of the country. The truth is we don't know the depth of the challenges we face. What we do know, however, is the seriousness of what we face. When we talk about just the conflict side, and that's only part of the problem, we have gone from a situation where when we went into Afghanistan and in the early period following the liberation, there was one province that had a serious enough Taliban or insurgent presence to have some kind of shadow government, a network of influence strong enough to be organized. Now, after years of war, that is true in all provinces, but one. The maps you often see of conflict are conflict that is simply where the tactical clashes occur with ISAF or Afghan forces. But that is a small portion of the country in terms of Taliban and insurgent influence. The fact is that a weak international structure has not been able to organize effectively, has not created an Afghan government that has a presence of any kind in much of the country. And when you measure the impact of the Taliban and the problems this creates for food and agriculture, the problem is that it has moved into a power vacuum that is as serious in many ways as the areas which are under conflict, although by UN and U.S. estimates, in the course of a year, some 96 percent of the Afghan population, whether they're rural, whether they're farmers, whether they're people living in cities or urbanized areas, are going to encounter some form of violence that affects their daily lives. And many will find that percentage much higher. Now, these are all laid out in broad terms in the data in the charts that I've provided in this handout, but that can only begin to address some of the issues involved here. We talk about food aid, but while the Taliban and conflict are a serious problem, so is a lack of capacity within the Afghan government. And that capacity in terms of its presence in the field has actually deteriorated over time in spite of aid. The surveys of corruption indicate that Afghanistan went from a state which ranked roughly in the middle in terms of corruption to one that now ranked second from the bottom. And throughout that, there is not simply a matter of leadership at the top. As you move food through this country and the food flows largely through Iran into much of the country for the World Food Program, because today military supplies dominate the roots from Pakistan and the North. At virtually every level, there is a tax. The tax takes up part of the money, part of the food. When it flows down to the local level, at the local level, officials will take part of the food, use the food for influence, allocate the food to their tribe, their family, their group. And the instruments to deal with this simply are lacking. There is no capacity to manage these programs. You have to feed a system which is not only corrupt, but where the U.N. and the United States simply have no presence to measure the scale of what is happening. We know how serious it is, but basically we have no ability in the field to know in detail how much this corruption really interacts with the problem of violence. And we also find within the aid efforts, there is not only an almost total lack of coordination between the countries in the agricultural and food efforts inside Afghanistan, but the U.N. efforts are so stove-piped that UNAMA does not coordinate well with the food program, which does not coordinate well with the food and agricultural organization. We are dealing with a structure, and this is not unusual, where whether it is Oxfam or the World Bank or others, the estimates are that some 40 percent of the aid that flows into Afghanistan is consumed without reaching Afghans in any normal sense of the term. It is consumed in overhead, it is consumed in security, it is consumed in corruption. To actually map what happens in the field both for food in urban areas and agriculture in producing food is by itself a nightmare. At this point in time, the basic aid effort is approximately 24 people from the Department of Agriculture, although that number is doubling, and about 300 people in the United States military from the National Guard and Reserve Structures. The bulk of the aid effort has nothing to do with the normal aid donors, and most NGOs and other groups do not reach most of the country, which is consumed by conflict. These problems are affected by opium, which is a dominant factor in agriculture and diverts resources and efforts from food, from the fact that you can't move anything in Afghanistan without encountering constant physical problems and being taxed by the police, by the insurgents, and by power brokers. It is affected by the fact that the normal problems in agriculture are serious enough, but for example the Taliban pays between four and eight times as much for a young man to volunteer for some act of violence as he can earn in the agricultural sector. And this is essentially a feudal structure. Much of agriculture is dominated by the fact that most people are not farmers in the normal sense. They live in rural areas and they work seasonally, or they live as displaced people in populated or urban areas and find some kind of agricultural job. Most landowners are poor by our standards, but they are the minority. And this creates yet another food problem. When we look at this, we also see the dominating impact of population growth. People often talk about the traditions and the history of Afghanistan. Well in the 1940s it was probably a country of under four million people. When the Russians invaded it was a country of some 15 million people. The best estimates we have today are that this is a country now of roughly 30 million people. And out of that population more than 85% has been born since the Russian invasion. Caught up in a place where at one point or another some 70% of the Afghan population moved, at least in some way as a result of conflict, the Taliban and the other challenges. Dealing with this is going to be an issue which will take more than a decade if we can secure the country. It requires outside aid and support indefinitely into the future. It means dealing with the fact that as the population has increased, the nature of agriculture in much of Afghanistan has been for water and other reasons that what was really needed is larger farming areas, more capital investment and fewer people on the land to consume resources. And at this point in time none of those things are easily possible. Finally, I think that if you look at the end of this presentation you see a demonstration of another set of challenges. It is almost impossible to describe the topography of Afghanistan to somebody who has not flown over it. Or to map out how difficult it is to move in much of the country and to move any kind of bulk cargo. People talk about opium versus wheat. But when you look at the relative weight you have to understand what it means. You have incredible variations in elevation, in climate, in rainfall and in the hydrology or water flow of the country. At this point in time you are some 40 years behind in terms of major efforts to improve water supply and about a third of the traditional irrigation system, particularly the most sensitive areas in traditional structures which are underground tunnels has collapsed as a result of violence and conflict. So these are just one case study. And to make this country work to bring it some kind of lasting security, we have to find ways to change the way we give aid. We have to find ways where instead of project oriented aid or simply making things better for individual farmers, we address the requirements in food terms of the Afghan people. Something for which today the United States government and the UN has no capacity whatsoever. There is no aid agency operating in Afghanistan that either knows with any validity the requirement for food aid or can measure the effectiveness of its agricultural aid programs relative to either regional effects or the requirement. To do this requires a new approach to the way we look at this. It requires a new concentration on food and aid. With that, Steve, let me close. Thank you very much, Tony. Perhaps you can offer us a little more insight into what you think such a strategy would look like because it's a very daunting picture that you paint. It is a picture in which the U.S. government is attempting to put another cadre of USDA officials on the ground and to engage on these issues. Perhaps you could offer us a bit more commentary about where strategy is going and what it is that you see as these essential new elements. And then I'd like to open the floor for a few comments and questions from our audience. I think we need to be very, very careful because when we talk about the surge in civilians, we're talking about essentially a very significant increase relative to what we've had. But at the fall of 2009, the total number of civilian aid workers that were actually involved in the field and provincial reconstruction teams, these are the people in the field as distinguished from people in the capital, was less than 60 people given the rotation in leave times. Out of the PRT manning for the U.S., you had over 1,000 people in uniform. When we go to the so-called surge, we'll end up with about 253 people that will rotate in and out of the field as civilians. Out of this, a small portion will deal with agriculture and none will work with food distribution and the World Food Program. That basically in a country of 30 million people as diverse and spread out as Afghanistan means that you are basically concentrating on a very narrow range of districts where you need to focus for military purposes. That's 80 districts in total. We'll begin with areas like Kandahar, although you will attempt to improve the capabilities in other areas. And Kandahar itself, which is one city, will be a phased effort which will take over a year and it will not affect the agricultural output or the food output. That will have to continue to be an aid project. So until you have substantial security and you have been able to squeeze out the insurgents and expand the range of aid workers to cover much larger areas, you don't make a beginning. At that point, there are important areas which are quick. Road systems, food processing make an immediate difference in the flow of food and the willingness to sell and grow food as distinguished from opiates. But to do that in much of the country, you're still making a start. To talk about moving toward what Afghanistan once was, which was a food exporter, is not clearly possible given its demographics, but if it is possible, it will take perhaps a decade of stability and peace, and that is at least something four to five years in the future as a best case estimate. Thank you. Do we have any comments or questions from our audience? If we do, please come to either the microphone in the back or there's one up here. Please just identify yourself briefly and keep your questions short. Yes, please. I'm Mitzi Worth. I'm with the Naval Postgraduate School. It seems to me one of the problems turns to be overpopulation. I mean one can look at that from that perspective. So is it impossible to deal with this whole question of limiting the population by birth control or is that out of the realm of any thinking over there? In the real world, it is simply out of the question. Yet, in terms of priorities, we can have all kinds of legislated attempts to improve human rights and Western values. But in terms of impact, one of the realities is that when you survey where the courts are and where this is actually put into practice, you find that it is wonderful to legislate and it has almost no meaningful impact on the Afghan population as a whole. Just getting to core values like women's education is a major challenge. Going to deal with Afghan values and problems in terms of something like population education and birth control is not a matter of reaching the educated Afghan. It is a matter of reaching the other 95 percent or more of the population. And to do that, you have to find some way to be able to reach a people that are relatively at peace and you have to find a way to deal with what is in many ways a feudal structure where the whole problem of birth control is almost the 180 degrees out of phase with a society where having the maximum number of children is a critical sign of wealth and status among the bulk of the population. To begin to educate is one problem, but the other is at this point in time, there is simply no structure in Afghanistan which can administer any program in most of the country. It is not a matter of a lack of capacity, it is a matter of zero capacity in much of the country. Alan, did you want to have a, and Tony? Why don't you come up right here? I'm Alan Jury, the director of the World Food Program Office here in Washington D.C. One of the challenges is that you've mentioned is the monitoring and access to the countryside. And we face kind of a dilemma this year, for example, we dramatically increase the monitoring, mainly through third party monitoring because as you've correctly pointed out, there are vast areas of the country where for security international staff can't get to. The challenge is that when you look at a budget, when you increase for monitoring and all these types of things, you actually end up spending even less on the actual food because you're spending so much more on the monitoring. The question I guess is given this challenge and given the monitoring difficulties, is it still the right direction to go even though if you're looking at it, the cost per ton of food delivered actually goes up because the monitoring is mostly personnel, staff, logistics and things like that. Because that's the challenge we face as people have looked at our new AFGAM program and said, well you're moving the same amount of food as you did last year and you're saying it's going to cost us more, but the monitoring challenge is so great that I don't think we need to develop new systems in both monitoring and assessment, particularly in these difficult areas and I don't think there's really much of an alternative to go in that direction, but I'd be interested in your thoughts on that. Well you raise a critical question and I think it is not unusual because one of the problems we have is the tendency to assume that if it is aid you don't need to worry about corruption, theft and all of the problems that you get in actually handling the issues you've raised. I think the truth of the matter is first, you can't get meaningful third party monitoring in some of the highest risk areas which also are the areas where people need it most and actually trust third parties period. It doesn't matter what the program is, you simply have an issue where you can do third parties, the problem for any one program is that you are attempting to monitor virtually the entire country as part of one single effort. One of the great difficulties we have is that Unama, which is in theory supposed to be coordinating aid efforts, has never issued a single report on aid and frankly does not do anything with its list of corrupt officials other than occasionally keep it. I think the problem that we have here is first, we can't do this in part of the country, second to do it at all should not be the responsibility of your program or any one program and then the nightmare we have of different UN agencies that are not properly coordinated operating in a 42 country alliance where each aid team operates to different rules in isolation from the others and more than half of the countries do not comply with Afghan law in reporting their aid programs to the Ministry of Finance is a structure which simply shouldn't exist. So the honest answer to your question is what we need is a coordinated effort that doesn't put the burden on one group and with you I think the only answer is you have to do some sampling to try to trace this but your problem is pushed down on you through the lack of effective aid coordination within the country. Let's take one last question, Tony Carroll. I'm struck by the, I'm Tony Carroll the Manager of Trade and I was thanks to Kristen and Steve a part of the Advisory Committee or Task Force behind this report. I'm struck by the comparisons between Afghanistan and Ethiopia, a country that both Steve and I know quite well. They both have feudal land ownership. They don't have a massive conflict, they don't have massive corruption at least to the extent that you describe but they have many of the same land ownership issues and transportation issues. What we've found in Ethiopia through the years of agricultural technical assistance is in effect the ability of being able to grow high value agricultural products for export but at the same time also improve land practices at the most basic subsidence level. One of the Ethiopian spheres is that if they open up land ownership to any extensive sort of modern way there will be a flood of people from the agricultural areas into the cities and therefore create heavily social burdens upon the government society to sustain that migration. So I'm wondering you know if we are, have some sort of hope at the end of the rainbow here by maybe slowly concentrating our technical assistance not only subsidence agriculture but also finding spaces where we can grow some high value added agricultural. Well first at this point in time you have a number of high value efforts underway but they are very narrow in focus. They are essentially not boutique projects but they are limited to the areas which are secure and where there is transport and food processing capability which is a relatively narrow part of the country. The basic subsistence problem is the key problem and the problem for subsistence people is often that about the only thing you can move and process is something as small as an opiate. So you already have a high value crop and it is achieving miracles in terms of export capabilities. Unfortunately it is not exactly the crop that any of us would really like to see. One of the other problems we have here and it's not unusual is we already have had the flood of people. If you look at the sort of open source data on Afghanistan you'll see figures saying that 70 to 80 percent of the Afghan people are in agriculture. The problem is that there is absolutely no basis for that number because what we know is from simply satellite mapping there are extremely large parts of the Afghan population who've already been pushed into the cities and are living essentially on aid, welfare and food supplies. But what we don't have is any ability to characterize this and part of the problem is that on the one hand we had development people who looked at this as a classic long-term development program and ignored agriculture for about the first five years of the program in Afghanistan and the other is that when it comes down to field work a very large numbers of the people in the field operate in an extremely limited area which is the area where they're protected by troops. Moreover they operate according to national aid priorities and they are on rotations of three to eight months which means that the bulk of them in something like an agricultural program come punch a ticket, get status in their aid structure in the capital and leave having accomplished very little. Well we're going to have to transition on that note. Please join me in thanking Tony Corisman for this presentation.