 Alex Theer, and I am the director for our Afghanistan and Pakistan programs here at the Institute. And it is my pleasure to welcome you here for what I think will be a fascinating discussion. One that I personally have been waiting many months for. For a variety of reasons. I think we've all been waiting many months to be at this point. I had a discussion with Steve Hadley in August this year just before the Afghan elections in which we said it would be great to do a session on the way forward for Afghanistan. Let's see how things shake out over the next few weeks. And those weeks turned into months. And here we are today on December 7th. Finally, I think on the other side of what has been an interesting and uncertain period for all of us. To examine the situation in Afghanistan and more broadly, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the region with three of the most interesting people and interesting minds I think that could be brought to bear in this discussion. What I'm going to do is introduce them briefly and say a few words. And then we're going to conduct today's event as a discussion. I will lead the three in a series of questions and answers and perhaps repartee if it gets to that. And then we will have an opportunity for the audience to speak as well. So let me begin by introducing Ashraf Ghani. Ashraf Ghani is really someone here I think who does not need introduction. He has been a fixture on the international stage since 2001. He is now the chairman of the State's Effectiveness Institute, the Institute for State Effectiveness. I think it's wrong here in the bio. And prior to that or congruent with that, he was also the chairman or chancellor of Kabul University. But I think what we all know him best for is having served as Afghanistan's preeminent aid coordinator and then minister of finance through the first several years of Afghanistan's transition. At that time and since and before for people who knew his work as lead anthropologist at the World Bank, I think Ashraf is in many ways best described as an unending font of ideas. A discussion with Ashraf always yields a series of new and interesting ideas and just based on something he's about to publish, one of which I think we will explore today. Second is Stephen J. Hadley. Steve Hadley between 2001 and 2009 sat at the absolute apex of the United States national security infrastructure. He served four years as deputy national security advisor to President Bush under Condoleezza Rice and then as national security advisor for four years. Prior to that Steve also served as assistant deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security policy under Dick Cheney during the first Bush one. He has also served as a lawyer and served on the national security council under President Ford. Steve has had a long, eminent and fascinating career in government and among other things today will I think be able to provide us a level of insight that few of us have access to about the cauldron of decision making that our president has recently come through. And finally we have Wendy Chamberlain. Wendy has had a fascinating career both in the United States and overseas. I think one of my favorite things that Wendy has done was serve as deputy high commissioner for refugees leading the United Nations refugee agency that services the needs of tens of millions of refugees around the world. She was also an assistant administrator at USAID. She was director of global affairs and counterterrorism at the national security council and perhaps most pertinent to this discussion although not exclusively also served as our ambassador to Pakistan. So Wendy has seen it all in the field at home in the United Nations and has a really amazing amount of experience to bring to bear on the questions that confront us today. So let me start by quoting President Obama on December 1st. President Obama said it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. With an additional 7,000 allied troops that have already been announced that brings the United States and its allies to a total of over 140,000 troops in Afghanistan. More than the Soviets arguably had at the height of their occupation of Afghanistan and this comes notwithstanding what our allies pay at a cost to the United States now of 110 to 120 billion dollars per year. We also discovered a new term for those who are paying close attention to the international press. Our surge has a name and its name is Max Leverage. This came out in a piece, a very interesting long piece in the New York Times yesterday that described the process of deliberations that the President went through to reach this point. And I think that this Max Leverage idea approach or philosophy had four key points. The forces are going in quickly, more quickly than the military commanders had at first requested. They are going in to quote-unquote seize the initiative. They are going to accelerate the training of the Afghan national security forces and the overall transition of handing over to the Afghan national security forces and the Afghan government as a whole. And then they are going to start to leave quickly. The President said, again quoting, we will begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Much discussion in the last few days has centered precisely on that line. How quickly is the United States planning to withdraw from Afghanistan as of July 2011? Or as another way of putting it, how steep is the backside of that curve? Does it trail out over a long, long period of time? Or is it a rapid de-escalation accompanying the rapid escalation that we have seen this year? But most importantly, we are here to examine the way forward today. And I'm going to ask a few questions and I'll sit down and start with specifically a few broad questions that we want to focus on. One question about this date that I think comes from the tension in the President's speech is that what if by July 2011 we are still in trouble or the Afghan forces are still not ready? Do we start to withdraw anyway? And does the passage of another 18 months make it less of a vital national interest for us to be in Afghanistan? What are the benchmarks, measures, outcomes that we need to see in order to determine whether the United States is succeeding, whether the Afghan forces are succeeding and whether this transition is successful? How do we effectively partner with Afghanistan and Pakistan? That was really, I think, in many ways the core of the President's speech, our partnership with the Afghan government and our partnership, or in some cases lack thereof with the government of Pakistan. And finally, the biggest challenges and opportunities that we face in doing this. So I want to move and start the questions starting out with you, Pashtrop. You are an Afghan, a proud Afghan who I think through your writings and speeches have made clear some suspicion or skepticism of grand schemes that are going to transform your country from the outside. And I'm wondering how you react, perhaps stepping back not only from the President's speech but more broadly from eight years of engagement in Afghanistan. And now having reached this force level, at least on paper, of 140,000, is this overall approach to Afghanistan something that can in fact succeed in stabilizing Afghanistan? It's a pleasure to be with you and thank you for the very kind words. Can you hear me? Oh, do you want me to go there? No, no, we're going to remain sitting, sorry. The nature of the event is going to be such that we're going to be back and forth between everybody. It wouldn't be feasible. If there's some way to adjust the cameras or lift them up or... Sorry. The question is not use of troops or their numbers. Numbers alone are not going to make the difference. The issue is what kind of overall goal is there? What degree of coordination between the several in the military is there? Because the part that is really impressive about this speech is that the political governance economic side is absent in action. The security community has gotten its act together, it's coherent. It is truly strategic. But the civilian component is missing. So we still do not have an overall United States strategy for Afghanistan. We have military security objectives for Afghanistan. This point needs to be registered. Two, there is no commitment to funding Afghan security forces in the medium to long term. How can you ask a government to increase its military forces to 400,000 knowing full well that the national income is not sufficient to pay for 70,000? What gives? And what is the nature of the dynamic that is to unfold? Every US soldier for a year in Afghanistan costs $1 billion. So the deployment in terms of numbers is an enormous implication. But what is the use of the Afghan security forces? And how do we bring the necessary flexibility and the necessary partnership? Three, the strategy is articulated in the absence of Afghan voice. Not because the United States does not want Afghan voice, but because the government in Kabul is incapable of offering voice. The classic, you know, when we pulled, Bill Taylor, Mr. Hadley and others were with us, and I think they would testify that during the first period, 2001 to 2005, almost all the key initiatives came from Afghans. The international community was being pulled by us, not being, we were not being pushed by the international community. This pulling and pushing has changed. Because when all is said and done, only the nationals of a country can own the country. Your presence, you know, your partners is going to be temporary. All of us know that. The question is, what kind of partnership do we bring about that the exit from Afghanistan is with honor and dignity, and leaves behind a stable Afghanistan? In this light, I think the President of the United States, the National Security Council of the United States and the United States people have a lot of challenges in front of them. It is not going to stop with this speech. It's going to be an ongoing series of work. And London is the first opportunity to change the relationship to a true partnership and then cobbled, I think within, say, a month and a half to two months of London, is essential so that we bring the national dimension and the regional dimension. Because we are operating at four levels. There's the international community led by the United States and there are significant tensions within the international community regarding how Afghanistan should be approached. And we need to convince the American public, the European, the Japanese that Afghanistan is worth the engagement. Second is the regional dimension. We live in a very difficult neighborhood. Our problems are not national. Our problems are regional in nature and we need to bring a regional dimension. Three is the national level. Because you cannot ignore a national government. A national government, no matter how weak, is the legal authority to say no. So it needs to be brought into a partnership. And fourth is the subnational level. Because complexity now in Afghanistan requires dealing with these four levels simultaneously. And this means that at the heart we need to recognize there's no military solution in the long term for Afghanistan. We need a political governance economic strategy that puts in place the condition in incentives. Two, use of force is necessary. We cannot ignore the fact that use of force is necessary to change the equation. But it is not sufficient. In three, the duration depends on the coherence. The unity of effort and a narrative. And fourth, as we embark on this path, we have to expect a lot of difficulties. One of those is the number of casualties. There are going to be Afghan casualties. There are going to be international casualties. How do we explain how do we keep public support? All of this I think is manageable. But it's by no means easy. So hence, again, to conclude, we need to elevate the discussion to a strategic discussion, not to one of the number of forces or the 18 months. But what is the goal? How do we achieve that? How do we measure progress towards achieving this? And who constitutes the center of gravity? For me as an Afghan, the center of gravity is the people of Afghanistan. Because that is the most important judge. It's not the political elite of Afghanistan. It's certainly not the criminalized elements that control a substantial part of the economy or others. And unless the people of Afghanistan judge the process to be going in the right direction, it's not going to. So what have we lost? In 2001, December in 2002, we had the overwhelming support of the Afghan people for engagement with the international community. For the first time in our history, we surrendered the use of force in our country legitimately to international community. This is unprecedented for us. But the international community was not willing to engage. Mr. Hadley will remember that I was bringing his attention that what would cost $10 million in 2002 would cost $20 billion eight years later. The nature of the engagement did not take place. Now you're dealing with a skeptical Afghan political public and simultaneously with a president in an international community that has limited political capital at their disposal to turn the situation around. So we need to have a strategy that increases the political capital on the ground and internationally to move forward. Thanks. There's a lot of things in there that I hope, themes that I hope we'll return to. Steve, let me touch on one thing that Ashraf highlighted. And that is the character of the American engagement. Simultaneous with the last eight years, the engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, we've been having a national debate here about how the United States pursues its foreign policy. And in some ways, the imbalance of resources that the military has versus the civilian side. One of the points that Ashraf is making is that this debate has been predominantly about the military engagement. What is it that we need to do from the U.S. perspective on the civilian side to strengthen our ability to engage and to actually engage with the Afghans to enhance the possibility of a successful transition? Well, there's really two aspects to that. And again, I want to express appreciation for the opportunity to be here and to join my colleagues. There are really two things. One, there is a sort of a long-term problem, which is something that the U.S. Institute of Peace and a lot of other groups are working on. That is, you know, a general theme that we've spent 60 years in this country learning how to recruit, train, exercise, fight, and improve our military. And we have a great military. And yet every time when we get into needing to build institutions in post-conflict or pre-conflict or failing states, we do it as a pickup game. And we try it one way in Bosnia, another way in Afghanistan, another way in Iraq. And I can go through the details. But the truth is, we have not, I would argue, built the same kind of civilian institutional capacity to be a partner with our military in these post-conflict, pre-conflict, failing state situations. It is a national problem. We haven't done it. Other countries have not done it. The United Nations hasn't done it. We all need to develop these capabilities and have them interoperable. So in the same way that we can all go to war together, we can all go to peace-building together. We have not done that. And it is a national project and it's going to take a long time. In the short run, I hope Ashraf is not right. I hope that, and I have some reason if you look at some of the things that General McChrystal has written and has been saying, I think there is a civilian surge. If you listen to Secretary Clinton that is to accompany this military surge, I think it's, you know, there's always a question of what do you put in a presidential speech. And I think it's unfortunate that there wasn't more in the speech about the civilian surge. Because it is a critical element. The security surge buys you time and space to develop governance institutions, positive economic activity and help train and empower Afghans to take responsibility for the future. That's why you put in the military is to buy you time. And hopefully there is a plan and I believe there is to take advantage of it. But the challenges are daunting. One of the problems is it is a great thing that there are over 40 countries who are with us militarily in Afghanistan. It is a great thing that there are many countries running PRTs and having a civilian presence. But it is very difficult to manage. Ashraf talked about the need for unity of effort. Well, we need to have unity of effort not just on the military side but on the civilian side. And we are not organized well to do that. I'll give you one anecdote. Yopta Hoopskeffer, who was the Secretary General of NATO, talked about how all his NATO countries were on the ground in Afghanistan. Most of them had PRTs. And he supposedly, NATO Secretary General, heard nothing from anybody about what they were doing. Each little unit was a fiefdom where a local country had its forces and its PRTs. We made some efforts to get some common rules of engagement, if you will, or common concepts that would be reproduced in all the PRTs. We made much less progress than we need to make. So if we're going to do it, we're going to have to engage the Afghan government. They've got to know who to talk to. And we need on the military and civilian side much more unity of effort and then the kind of very close civilian military cooperation that we had in Iraq. That's what we need in Afghanistan. Wendy, let me just stay on this theme for a second. You've been at or near the head of two of the largest aid bureaucracies in the world. In reality, how do we make this sort of partnering work? How do we simultaneously provide people who don't know the country an enormous amount of budget, nearly all of the budget for certain national programs in Afghanistan, but at the same time make the Afghans the ones who are in the lead? It's very difficult and I don't want to minimize the difficulty. Steve's remarks just made me remember a personal experience that I had. Stephen talking about the need for unity of effort and unity of strategy as we go in, even on the civilian side. I can recall the day that I first walked into UNHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva for my interview to be Deputy High Commissioner. And I had gotten, met with a High Commissioner and then I went in to meet with the Assistant High Commissioner and I had been talking to Kamal Morjan for about three minutes when he got a telephone call and he was informed that a UNHCR young French woman had just been assassinated in Kandahar. And his assistant who was with me and an American woman just collapsed in the floor in tears and I had been determined that I was not going to take this job, but at that moment I changed my mind. The sacrifice that these young UN people make, not often considered, not often thought of in our terms, is enormous. So the reason I make this point is to illustrate the dangers of losing your humanitarian space. Humanitarian space was lost in Afghanistan. The more the military takes the lead, the more all humanitarian workers, even UN workers, but USAID workers who I have enormous respect for as well, having worked in USAID, become combatants as well. The second point I'm making is that with regards to our PRTs, they're led by our military. You will have a PRT even today, which will be primarily military personnel, maybe one or two aid or state. If you look at the way the Germans do it, and there's a very good German NGO study on how different their approach is to PRTs, it's primarily civilian with maybe one or two military. It's a very different approach. So yes, I agree with Steve. We do need to come together with our partners on approaches, but we're not there yet, and we have a long way to go because this whole debate about humanitarian space, who takes the lead is fundamental. It's not just small. It's just not a matter of writing a briefing memorandum. Ashha, let me make the question of partnership a little bit more concrete. One question that is on everybody's mind is how we can succeed with President Karzai. You've known him for many years as a boss, compatriot, rival in the recent presidential elections. Can you give us some insight that explains the two prevailing portraits of him as the great conciliator and the darling of the West on one hand versus the other image that is emerging more recently as the hapless head of a corrupt government or criminal syndicate? Let me read a quote from something that you've written recently but has not yet published. By restoring a group of rapacious individuals to positions of authority, Karzai essentially gave the Taliban the opportunity to make their comeback. By 2005 they were regrouping and injustice had become the insurgency's fuel. The two portraits come from two periods. The first portrait comes from 2001 to 2005. And the reason for that I think is important. Mr. Karzai is great talent in performing the role. He would get an Oscar for performance. No, he is a great communicator. What he can do in the little mosque in the palace is few politicians can do. He truly has a gaudiest touch. But he has to have a script. The process in Bonn gives us a script. The partnership that we established in those years brought a team of Afghans that were determined to build a state in the face of opposition from everybody because we were not given the instruments. And in that regard, because he had to make decisions within a very tight deadline, the Bonn agreement is the only peace agreement that has had temporal benchmarks. But very structured. Every three months to six months you had to move the process forward. And within that, Mr. Karzai could not delay taking decisions by more than a week. Again, Bill was on the ground. Steve was here. We worked very closely together to be able to produce a narrative of forward movement. And the narrative was inclusive. Because what did we begin with Bonn? From an unrepresentative group of Afghans to get to launch a process that would result in the full sovereignty of the Afghan people for the first time electing their president directly. That narrative was compelling. And the play was so well coordinated that each act was known. So people knew because of this, uncertainty was taken out of the picture. And it's in that time, remember, there were no Taliban. They disappeared into their villages. The leadership got isolated. The rank and file joined the process. Over nine million people participated in the voting. And the voting process was a heroic act of national will. It was a fantastic drama. 80-year-old women asked to be carried to vote. People literally took their ablutions because they thought they would be assassinated, but they took the risk. So this is the first portrait. Now, the problem with this is the West handed us a restoration. So Mr. Karzai was handed a very poor hand. Now we need to acknowledge. The military strategy that was adopted in 2001 was to bring a group of people who were either in exile or in marginal places and hand them the all of government. We had an agreement from the UN perspective that Afghan forces would not intercouple that we will be able to treat Kabul as a neutral space and create state institutions based on full participation. But instead, Secretary Ramsfeld cancelled the agreement two days before because he needed probably the CNN watch or other considerations. So by the time Mr. Karzai took office, over 240,000 civilians had been appointed by Mr. Raban. Over 400,000 people were claimed to be in the security institutions. We end, a lot of the local power holders had relationships with Western countries that protected them. Now the second phase is 2005 to 2009 where he did not have a script. Where the constitution was compelling but it did not translate into a concrete program of action. And Mr. Karzai's predominant wish was not to be presiding over a new round of violence. Because of that, he adopted a policy of conciliation. The problem with conciliation when you don't have institutions is that they eat through the institutions of the state. So what developed four major threats? First threat, narcotics. This is a 560 billion industry that is developed in the last eight years. Afghanistan's narcotics constitutes 20% of the global illicit trade of 360 billion a year. Out of this, 500 billion has gone to international actors. So Europe's failure, Central Asia's failure, Russia's failure, China's failure to put security arrangements means that the problems are exported to us at the source of production. 20,000 to 40,000 Europeans have lost their lives due to heroin addiction, but nobody sees it in the newspapers. 160,000 Russians probably have lost their lives. What's the outcome? 18 billion dollars have been controlled by less than 1,000 individuals. 6.7 billion dollars have gone to 1.7 million Afghans who were involved in cultivation. The drug syndicate became a cartel that became overwhelming. 25 individuals now are at top of this, 15 of them in the south. This became the cancer that ate through society. There was no coherent counter-narcotics strategy to contain this and to rise to it. Second was Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda managed to regroup while we were busy going through our democratic transition phase. But they regrouped on the northwest frontier when our eyes were elsewhere. Three was the insurgency. And the reason for the insurgency, I think, is overwhelmingly because of restoration, injustice, and exclusion. I've talked to thousands of people in the south. The West does not figure predominantly in their narrative as to why they took up guns. Injustice by elements that have shown themselves incapable of governing the south between 1992 and 1994-96 is the issue. In the fourth is the transformation of the government as a result of both narcotics' interruption into a threat to that one people. General McChrystal, I think, following the analysis that I offered in May, is very clear. ISAF's mission is threatened by two threats. The first is the insurgency. The second is the Afghan government in the political brokers. Now, moving forward, because that's the past, Mr. Karzai has an option. He can either become an outcast or he can become a statesman. To become an outcast, all he needs to do is persist with what he's been doing the last five years. That's not in the interest of Afghanistan. That's not in the interest of the region. That's not in the interest of the world. So our hope and prayer in arguments and all we can do is to help him become a statesman. How do we do that? Again, by arriving at a road map where he can play the role that he's so good at. And the other is the man is incredibly good when you give him options. If you give him three options, he can actually come and make the decision because he's very quick at seeing the political consequences of technical options. But you wait for him for months. He will not come with an option himself. We need to understand every political leader's strengths and weaknesses. We cannot turn him into a father of the nation without significant assistance. But that is what is required. And the election is over. The West failed us and failed us really badly. They didn't lift a finger to help us carry a democratic free and fair election. And the UN needs to be investigated by a blue ribbon panel to seeing why, after expending $1 billion from 2004 to 2009 on elections in Afghanistan, could preside over such a debacle. But that's about learning lessons for the future. We've accepted Mr. Karzai to be the president of Afghanistan, not because of legitimacy, but because of necessity. I don't want blood in the streets of Afghanistan because there is political disagreement among a small group of political actors. We have a lesson. In 1992, seven individuals that knew each other extremely well could not agree. And they brought the destruction of the capital and our entire political destruction. We are not going to permit any individual to play that role again. So that's the boundary. We have to accept necessity. But second is, now we have to gain legitimacy. Legitimacy in Afghanistan is a process. It's not a single event. So we need to have a roadmap to make sure that the people of Afghanistan who become very skeptical, both of democracy and development, are going to see real consolidation of democratic institutions in real delivery of services so we can move forward. I think this can be helped with, but this requires a very sustained dialogue in building on the foundations of 2001 to 2004 because everything that works today is a product of what we designed during that period. So it is not that Afghanistan is incapable of institutions or institutional development. I don't think that there's the equivalent of national solidarity in Pakistan or India. Iran certainly doesn't have it in Central Asia, the states don't. Our experience with telecom again, I think, is a first rate sort of showing that you can bring. So there are lots of grounds for capability. The key is to be able to, and here if I make a point, you don't need a civilian search in Afghanistan. You need a civilian search in the United States to support the developments in Afghanistan. The United States is not reaching to its core capabilities here. You don't need 20-year-olds or 25-year-olds running around providing six months short-term projects. What we need, for instance, so I'll give you one illustration, then stop, is to transform Afghanistan's agriculture, we need a consortium of 20 top land-grant colleges in this country to work with us virtually. That is capacity-building and mobilization to create a network of first-rate agricultural colleges. The market in Afghanistan works. You tell me, get food to the remotest location in Afghanistan, distribute the cash, people will go there. You don't need WFP to distribute food in Afghanistan. I think we are being approached in a very context-driven way, just because some African countries don't have the capability, now WFP or others, they bless their heart with all these alphabet soups. We need to affronize the process. In here, unless we remove the parallel governments that have been created by the aid bureaucracy, we're not going to succeed. These organizations are not accountable, they are not transparent, and they are not effective. If you want me to read chapter and verse, just take a look at the last report of the Inspector General from the Defense Department. The cases of corruption that are being documented are quite significant. So yes, there is affron corruption, but the international corruption is equally significant, and I think we need to add those books. Steve, you look like you're going to react and you can say whatever you want. A lot of the successes that we might have seen or we might have been able to build on disappeared. I'm curious to get your version of those events and what it is that you think has been driving the problems in Afghanistan. Well, I don't have a much disagreement with Ashraf, and I think it's useful to sort of step back if you listen to what he said. There's a narrative out there that nothing happened from 01 to 09 that was a complete period of neglect. Of course, that's not true, and as Ashraf described, between 01 and 05, the Afghans were doing very well. Thank you very much. They had implemented the bond conference. They drafted a constitution, a very progressive constitution. They'd had presidential elections. They had parliamentary elections. This was a governmental process that was beginning to emerge. There was a lot of international aid that was coming in. There's always a question about how much could Afghanistan absorb. We had some disagreements about that. By the end of that period, growth rate was over 10%. In terms of security, we were building Afghan security forces. There really wasn't a lot of violence in this country in 2005. 2005, we all thought, this is working. 2006, in January, Afghanistan comes forward, Afghan initiative, with a national development strategy, which is approved in London, and then six months later is funded in Paris. We're thinking, this is going in a good direction. Then what happens? Ashraf has talked to you about some things that happened in Afghanistan. Violence continues to go up. I kept these charts of violence, and it continues to go up. Second, the Taliban changed their strategy. From direct engagements with our troops, where they lost badly, they went to IEDs and suicide bombings and drawing a page from Iraq. Narconics goes up absolutely right, but we also learned that with a strong governor and the right kind of policies, a lot of provinces in Afghanistan actually in this period and after became poppy-free. Something like 60 to 70% of the poppy gets produced in Helmand and Kandahar, which is of course where the Taliban is and where the government is not. It's clear that the government in Kabul is laboring to try and extend its writ into the provinces, and it's not doing very well. Finally, it becomes very clear that the security forces we are building are too small for the need. But I guess the other thing I would say is, and we need to talk about it here, what happens in Pakistan in this period of time, which people forget. And it begins regrettably in September of 06 when President Musharraf has an initiative to develop peace agreements with tribes beginning in north Waziristan, but with a plan to do in the tribal area. It made sense on paper. Tribals would agree to exclude al-Qaeda, keep the Taliban under control. The Pakistan Army would step back, pull back, and economic assistance would come in, and we agreed at one and a half billion a year for five years to fund this program. It was an effort, if you will, at a counterinsurgency strategy. The problem is it did not work, and these areas became safe havens. And they became safe havens not just for attacks into Afghanistan, but they became safe havens for attacks that started moving into the settled areas of Pakistan. And when in the spring of 07, the Pakistani government begins to realize what is happening. These are mistakes. Of course, in March of 07, President Musharraf removes the chief's justice. There demonstrates strations in the streets, and Pakistan goes through an 18-month political crisis that does not end until August of 2008 when President Musharraf resigns. And during this period, they're not paying attention, and we are hearing from our military this safe haven in Pakistan is a real problem for us in Afghanistan. I remember talking to Admiral Fallon and talking about how we were doing well with our counterinsurgency strategy in the east of Afghanistan. He was very optimistic. And this problem in Pakistan, as well as the problems in Afghanistan, I think, combined to cause the situation to deteriorate. I don't want to filibuster here. I will be glad at some point to talk about what the steps of the administration and the international community did to 06 and 07 in terms of expanding the size of the Afghan forces, increasing U.S. troops, increasing coalition troops, seeking additional international funding. So we started a ramp up. But it was not fast enough, not decisive enough, I think, to get ahead of the problem. And I think that the Obama administration has made a difficult but right decision to try and see if we can get ahead of this problem. But I will just say one more thing. In the end of the day, Ashraf is exactly right. It is about the Afghans. This is their country. This is going to be their struggle to win in terms of the insurgency. And it's going to be their struggle to win in terms of building the institutions for the future. We can help them. We need to help them. But in the end of the day, the strategy has got to be not to exit. The strategy has to be to succeed. And when we succeed, success means the Afghans are able to take responsibility for their future with less and less support for us. When we succeed, then we can go home. But I think it's been important to listen to the testimony of the national security principles over this last week to make clear that this is not, as you said, a situation where we leave quickly beginning in July of 2011. Quite the contrary. They're saying this is where we begin a process of transfer that will let our people home. But they've been very clear how long it's going to take, what pace it's going to take. They've been very clear not to put an end date. They've talked about it. It's going to be years to make because it is going to depend on our success in helping the Afghans build the institutions for their future. So I think it's important. It's a narrative. I think Ashraf is right of five good years, three very difficult years, and hopefully now a commitment to get a strategy right in partnership. And the last thing I would say on partnership, President Karzai has an opportunity to be in some sense that founded the modern state and now saved the modern state in Afghanistan. And I think he will prove to be up to the task. He's going to need a lot of help. He's going to need us to come up with some benchmarks, some things that we need to do and he needs to do if we're going to succeed. Secondly, he needs to know that we're behind him and we want him to succeed. There's got to be both, here are the things we need to do together, but there's got to be some assurance that we're going to be there over the longer term to make sure he succeeds. And finally, we need to help him get the kind of staff support and professionals around him that can help him make these choices. That can help him make these choices and implement effective services. Good try, Steve. Let me just ask you a really brief follow-up on this question. Can you give an example? I mean, everybody's talking about how does the U.S. government get leverage over Karzai? How do we get him to make the right decisions at the right moment? Can you reflect on an experience that you may have had or that you oversaw in which we put pressure on Karzai in a positive way that yielded the right kind of results? You know, I have a problem with leverage. I always thought leverage is what you get on your adversaries. It's partnership and support that you give to your friends. And the way you do it is very simple. We have a common problem, we may have a common strategy and for it to succeed, I have to do this and you have to do that. And I'll tell you, you know, we're not talking about an Afghan surge in terms of the Iraq surge. Before we ever announced that surge, President Bush had had a number of conversations with Prime Minister Maliki and he basically said, here's what I'm willing to do in terms of the surge and it's going to be difficult for me politically. But if it's going to work, these are the things I'm going to need you to do in partnership with me. And he got a prior commitment from President Maliki to put more forces into Baghdad to let the surge go forward in a non-sectarian way. No safe havens, no shielding the Shia. Those were agreements he made in advance and announced to his own people before the President ever gave his speech on the surge. It wasn't getting leverage over Maliki. It was saying, I'm in. I'm your partner. This is what we need to achieve. This is how we're going to achieve it. And in order to do that, you've got to do some things and we've got to do some things. The international community needs to do some things. We need to all make those commitments and then coordinate it and get it to go forward. So it's, I think, leverage is the wrong word. It is strategic partnership to a shared objective, which is getting Afghanistan to be able to plot and carry out a bright future for its people. Wendy, let me come back to one of the themes that Ashraf touched on about our international aid practices. Much of our international assistance, vis-a-vis Afghanistan but globally, has moved from where it used to be, which is either direct implementation or cooperation with governments into funding contractors. And many have pointed out, including Ashraf, that this process of contracting and subcontracting sometimes cuts down the amount of aid that reaches the ground to 30%, 20% even. What do we need to do with our assistance architecture to be able to support not only Afghan leadership but Afghan development of Afghan capacity as well as simultaneously delivering the things that Afghans are expecting in order to get them to develop confidence again in this effort? If I could expand your question just a little bit to include Pakistan. I think we're, it's AFPAC for a reason and the speech was certainly included Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, although I don't think the President got into Pakistan quite enough in his speech. But the challenges to our assistance is certainly true both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They're very different challenges and I think require very different approaches. Different approaches in both, but the traditional aid model, I don't think works in either one of them anymore. I'm not sure there were very many places left in the world and we need a really thoughtful renovation of our own USAID agency. Maybe that's close to a failed state that we need to rethink. Getting back to comment Ashraf made earlier, we need to apply some of our core competencies here in America as well because we need, we need USAID. We need a signature agency to do a lot of the requirements that have been defined as the solution by the President and certainly by the situation. But to get to your question, the traditional aid model just to spell it out is a group of very smart people in USAID in the embassy sit down, talk to a lot of people in the country but then basically go back to their offices and write a country strategy. Determine the sectors, I'm going to be very simplistic here, determine the sectors to work in, determine what needs to be done, write an RFP or a contract, let it out and because it's such an onerous process dictated over years by congressional restrictions, they go to usually the same large NGOs and large non-profit, for-profit companies that then get subcontracted out to any number of local NGOs that actually provide it. Very difficult model to apply in either Pakistan or Afghanistan now because it requires monitoring, it requires getting out in the field, looking at the projects and security is very difficult frankly for Americans anywhere. Particularly in Pakistan it's a difficult model because there's tremendous resentment to this method. Resentment not only because of the anti-Americanism that has almost become a definition of Pakistani nationalism, unfortunately over the last few years, it's even got a name, we call it the trust deficit. And if you need evidence of this, just look at the reaction in Pakistan to the Kerry Lugar-Burman bill. We were thrilled with this bill, I was thrilled with this bill, we were terrified both in the House and the Senate in favor of the bill and many of us thought this was just the answer to the trust deficit because it addressed two of the biggest complaints in Pakistan about the United States, one that we would use them and leave them, we would abandon Pakistan as we had after the 80s when they helped us evict the Soviets and we immediately left, of course I don't think there's a Pakistani that remembers that the connection was really the presser amendments and they're developing the nuclear weapons program, it was simply we left because we got what we wanted and we left and we would do it again. We would do it again when after they helped us fight America's war against terrorism along the border in Afghanistan, we would leave again. So the first aspect of the Kerry Lugar bill or used to be Biden Lugar bill was it's for the long term, it's a five year bill. It was quite extraordinary in the way we do planning for bills, quite extraordinary but it would send a very definite message. The second message we sent also was an antidote to the anti-Americanism that had grown up in the last few years and that was that we give too much focus on the military. We stopped talking about our relationship with Pakistan and when we started talking about our relations with Musharraf and this bill was meant to say, no, no, no, no our relationship is with the people, the people of Pakistan, this could be civilian assistance, it would be explicitly not military assistance and we thought this was terrific. Sailed out, President signed it, gets to Pakistan almost immediately, in fact even before it gets there, every action came. Our press picks it up as, well this is the military who are annoyed at us, see it as a finger in their eye because it's directed to the civilians and not to the military and the military that didn't like some of the language that required them to do some stuff on non-proliferation and anti-terrorism. But you know, that's too facile, look deeper into the sandpile and you'll see that this was far beyond the military. It hit the Pakistani public and became widely unpopular because the Pakistani public frankly didn't trust their own government to deliver this assistance. The assistance was directed towards funds going through the Pakistani government with the notion that if it goes through the government you'll strengthen the government. The Pakistani people didn't really trust their political elites, who they see as largely corrupt and a parliament that oh by the way is largely feudal. What we sometimes forget is that Pakistan did not make the change in 1947 that India made and is largely a feudal country owned by very few families. That you have a huge 100 million Pakistani people who are landless, jobless, most of them illiterate, many half of them illiterate with no real hope for the future who also share what Asraf is pointing out to a great grievance that their government doesn't provide justice or education or services or jobs. The same characteristics that make the Taliban appeal in parts of Afghanistan appealing to the population and when recruits you also have in Pakistan and it basically gets to feudalism. So this bill isn't seen by the people of Pakistan as limiting any of that. They see it as just going to line the pockets of NGOs and government officials and frankly they haven't seen much coming their way from assistance programs in the past although I think that's a little false. As Steve pointed out in Afghanistan I think it's also false in Pakistan but that's certainly the impression. Now this bill is still hung up in the Pakistani parliament but it will pass out and it will pass out because it's perceived to be a huge amount of assistance and I say it's a teardrop in the ocean. It is not a significant amount of assistance at all given the Pakistani problems. This bill if what the intention of the bill is to put Pakistan over the tipping point over the new word I guess is the inflection point where a prosperous stable society that's capable of providing jobs and the standard of living for its people won't do that and it won't do it because it doesn't encourage the kind of reforms in the Pakistan government that are required. It doesn't encourage land reforms. I don't see that it encourages getting rule of law which is very admirable in Pakistan but down to the people, down to the villages I don't see that it encourages solutions for providing safety for people in the villages the Pakistani people are saying we don't want your police trainers a bunch of Americans come telling us how to train our police we know how to train our police and indeed they do. Some of the police units in Pakistan are the best in the world they are corrupt and very efficient problem is they're just not everywhere or most places but what's to make them go most places it's not a few trainers from the United States it's reforming the way Pakistan appoints its police and right now in most places in Pakistan it appoints its police the politicians appoint police because they delivered votes just as teachers aren't trained teachers teachers at all they're people who delivered votes and then get the teaching job and therefore collect the pay but don't necessarily show up in the schools so building more schools unless you reform the way teachers are recruited and paid will just end up with more ghost schools so I'm saying that our get back to your question because I don't want to ramble come right back to it I had a purpose here and that was to say that the way we deliver aid is very important to achieve what our goal is and I don't think we have that model and I don't see us going the talk around town about how we're going to deliver this Pakistan aid I think needs to be given a whole lot more thought it is some of the thought that's very much the traditional as I've just described and it's also a little bit of well let's take a page out of the coin out of counterinsurgency let's put our projects in those sub districts and districts where extremists have the highest recruitment rate and by the way they happen to be the same sub districts that are also the most impoverished I guess there's a reason for that the southern Punjab districts the northern Sindh districts Karachi I will maintain that's kind of doomed too because the anti-Americanism is already much too strong for you to be effective and I'll just leave with one last thought well I have the microphone on this because it's an idea and it's not even my idea it's to give some serious thought to doing what Secretary Duncan is doing over the Department of Education with Race to the Top where he flips the model he flips the model of No Child Left Behind it was a little bit like our traditional aid we set the strategy and we monitor to those goals two, let's set the goals let's set the goals and then offer to fund good ideas but the attraction to me in this approach is that if you don't if you set the broad goals which can reflect A.U.S. American values we value safety for people in their villages we value education as long as it leads to jobs we value non-corrupt governance etc and we will fund those projects that provide plans that are achievable and competent to reach those goals you might be doing something else you're encouraging American values secondly you're finding new leaders in Pakistan people who are outside the elites people who are outside of the lock on these NGOs open to everybody a lot of smart people in Pakistan a lot of smart people in the diaspora that have good ideas who want to invest themselves in this open it up to them let them come up with new ideas and they know their culture better than we do and they know what's needed better than we do and thirdly you encourage innovation and I think we have a lot to learn from the people of the region in this way so that's an idea on how to address a non-traditional model Steve you had a quick reaction what Wenny is talking about is very important because remember in Pakistan to help the Pakistanis succeed that's where we don't have a security dimension we don't have troops on the ground in Pakistan and we won't except for limited training and the like so getting the civilian piece right in order to help Pakistan is critical second point we used to say that you couldn't get Afghanistan right until you got Pakistan right it's also true now you can't get Pakistan right until you get Afghanistan right they go together and if you think about third point Pakistan as important as Afghanistan is Pakistan in some sense may be even more important because a destabilized Pakistan raises questions for India it raises a question of the competition between Taliban and the military control of nuclear weapons so these need to go together and Wendy's point is right on the Pakistani side our instruments are civilian and economic and they have to work I'm going to come back to Pakistan in a second but I want to follow the economic line with you Ashraf I don't know if this is your phrase but I see a neologism coming also in your new article you talked about counterinsurgency economics one of the critical elements of the Afghanistan strategy has to be using entrepreneurship that Afghans are famous for you talk about this idea of counter-insurgency economics within the overall framework of getting the Afghans not Karzai, not his ministers but getting ordinary Afghans fundamentally involved in their own destiny in their own progress making them economic actors and making them have a stake in the future can you expand on that a little bit that idea what do you mean by counterinsurgency economics thank you the first point of departure is that traditional aid does not work I think we have a consensus on this aid has worked only in places where the national actors have taken their destiny into their own hands take Singapore, who would have gone to Armando the most eminent expert on Asia in 1965 predicted that Singapore will explode into fragmentation yes it exploded in fantastic growth and the World Bank predicted that again in 1960s that Burma in Philippines will be the giants of Asia in Taiwan in South Korea had no future I just want to bring this to relief in terms of saying that each time the odds have been defied by people who have mastered the imagination to defy the odds and to put together a kind of national approach to building their countries and this is the indispensable element now what do I mean by counterinsurgency economics it is that first we have to move out of dogma the developmental community has no model to offer a country like Afghanistan it's just bankrupt you know the structural adjustment model does not work for Russia how will it work for Afghanistan so we need where do we go back the first thing is to go back to the experience of American agriculture go back to the New Deal mobilize the kind of imagination that the New Deal mobilized or go to the dust bowl agricultural markets in practice work the way they've worked in the US or Canada they've worked with immense state support and partnership not through some abstract market but the market has been an active active creation this is the first point so where is the capacity the capacity is in news bookstores and in departments of agriculture in Kansas, in Minnesota Wyoming, etc why are you giving us built-way bandits who know nothing about agriculture well literally I cite to you a case one group got a project for Kandar for 125 for Helmand, 125 million dollars they spent 120 million dollars on themselves and 5 million on mobilization in Lashkargar and of course nothing changed drugs went through the roof so this the regarding the range of the experience second that economics is as significant a lever as use of force this is the core idea what is the struggle over who's the price the price in Afghanistan is 70% of the population that is under 22 what have we done in the last eight years for this population we have not created a single university or upgraded a single university that even meets regional standards we have not provided the skills the drug lords provide 1.7 million jobs where are the jobs that the international community in the Afghan government provided look at the figures 56% of assistance between 2002 and 2009 has been spent on security this is 21.6 billion dollars 11 billion dollars has been spent on economic and social development but you see no visible impact because of the contracting model so here I want to propose a fundamental change in organizing the development assistance so we create Afghan stakeholders let me give you one example the Afghan construction industry has come to its own the change is phenomenally impressive but I've spoken to a lot of them 70% of the best Afghan construction firms spend their time chasing contracts and what do they get they get the fifth layer of a contract from a U.S. contractor that doesn't do anything again an illustration I wrote was given for 125 million dollars to a U.S. contractor what did this contractor do turn around right around and give subcontracted to a regional firm for 80 million dollars what's the contribution of this firm to this entire project one engineer literally to supervise what that subcontractor do then turns around and hires a group of Afghan contractors who actually do all the work so if we want to do this through counter insurgency economics the way I'm phrasing it let's build on the example of Spain South Korea Singapore in the southern states of the United States so we organize the construction industry in a coherent way that we have either one requirement a contractor can subcontract more than once and that for that contract they need to deliver real services designs that are appropriate material etc otherwise they should lose their licenses there should be a sanctioning process or two better allow the Afghan government to purchase a first rate construction firm they're going on an auction on a fire auction in Dubai and other places to design the big projects reorganize the construction industry into 200 firms provide them with reliable contracts 40 to 5 years in no time if you want delivery within 18 months we can deliver 400 dams 10,000 kilometers of roads whatever other 40% can be provided with micro hydropower electricity too very effectively American aid can be made 6 to 9 times more effective if change in authorities takes place and in the time you mentioned the price of the war the price of the war is coming to a level where it's going to be equal to the price of the health care you cannot change the price of the health care but you can change the price of the war very very substantially and the health care in emergency economics is a critical piece of this but we then need to approach economic governance for what it is a mode of organizing the rules the authorities decision rights responsibilities and partnerships that can create those sets of results Afghans we've been trading for couple of thousand years we've been even trading on each other the famous expression that you can rent an Afghans but you cannot own one it's true temporarily people have tried to rent us the issue is to change the incentives in these incentives I think can be changed substantially so what's my concrete proposal focus on 10 municipalities next year that would be 40% of the population of Afghans who have built rural solidarity now come to build a program of urban solidarity create mechanisms of coordination you're very kind in mentioning why is it that the problem of coordination has emerged since 2005 why didn't we have any problem of coordination because I approached Steve Adley and coordinated with him on behalf of Afghanistan we were rule bound and oriented you can invent many foreign entities to coordinate they will fail the structure needs to be joint Afghan international mechanism of coordination it has to have sufficient authority and accountability to be able to coordinate and I think there are some very interesting ideas on the table that one could explore these issues in some bring what has been missing namely that you have a very coherent military community the US army has really earned my enormous respect because this army is not the army of 2001 that went to Afghanistan it has learned phenomenally and it has learned for the better so the comparisons with the Russians are immensely false this army primarily is interested in reducing violence it is understanding the need for governance for rural in Pakistan it didn't even seem to be a leak although I'm not sure what the source was but seems hardly the type of thing you would announce excuse me by the US government by the US government but we have this odd relationship right now with the Pakistani government where we're pursuing a war from the skies in the tribal areas trying to kill terrorists and at the same time the Pakistani government at least officially denies cooperation and officially often registers protests can we keep up this dynamic for very long of continuing this without the actual active support of the Pakistanis well you raise an issue that have dilemmas both for the United States and for Pakistan one dilemma for any US government official and that's why Wendy was right to ask what was the source is if the United States had the kind of program that is reported in the press it probably would be done under covert action authorities and therefore would be something that government officials wouldn't talk about and dilemma for Pakistanis is a country that knows it needs help knows it needs that the impact on relations would be devastating if an attack came out of Pakistan and killed Americans here at home but on the other hand has their own politics and has their own national pride and we have dilemmas on our side they have dilemmas on their side and I think it's one of those cases where too much precision on either side is not helpful and that's by the way Wendy let me ask you a question I just want to say because I want to stay on this theme you have been on the other end of the VTC the video teleconference from not specifically Steve Hadley although maybe in that case you've been the person in Pakistan the ambassador who is being told by the president I need you to get the Pakistanis to do X how do you do that as an ambassador engage with the government that you're dealing with on such a difficult and challenging issue if you can address that and whatever else you wanted to say in reaction well I was ambassador in Pakistan in 2001 I arrived there in August of 2001 and let me give you both a historical answer and a current answer because they're very different the political dynamic is very different when of course when I arrived it was a military dictatorship it wasn't president then it was General Musharraf and the crisis that I was convinced I would be facing as ambassador in Pakistan was one of famine famine in Afghanistan it had been reported by our USAID team that had gone in in April that a combination of three years of drought civil war and Taliban blocking WFP food distributions would pretty much complete the food supply in Afghanistan by December of 2001 we were already beginning to see hundreds thousands of hundreds and thousands of refugees beginning to come over into Pakistan and the Pakistani government was blocking them and jalazai and threatening to push them back I thought my task was to persuade the Pakistan government to let even more refugees in with a public political system that felt that everything wrong with Pakistan was because of Afghan refugees and that the Americans had created this situation and once again even before I did Naughty and I always do Naughties I went to the jalazai camp just to see it, to visit it even before I presented credentials which I was scheduled to do on September 13 and the word got back to President Musharraf that watch out for this new ambassador, she's aggressive so he did something typical of President Musharraf he invited me to dinner and we stayed up and talked very late, he and General Dharani and myself and this was still in August and we got to know each other on a personal basis and I knew what his vision for his country was so on September 13 when I was instructed by Steve Dharani to go in and say are you with us or are you with us are you against us I knew him enough to know that he's a proud general and I come from a very long military family that it had to be done very delicately so I said are you with us or are you against us because that was my instruction but I said I know you're with us because we talked I know how you feel and I know we can do this together but let's talk now about what we need to do together to get there so that answers your specific question because I know I haven't been answering your question since you've been giving me up until now so that's the story on that but today you have a very different situation because you don't have a military, a single military guy to go to to get a single answer which we needed and we needed then which was to flip 180 degrees to support us in dropping their policy towards the Taliban today you've got a very complicated political situation you've got one of the better reforms that President Musharraf instituted was to open up the airways to TV to private TV and you've got 48 television stations privately owned stations now in Pakistan which is think about it it will be important in a country with the illiteracy rate that you've got suddenly you've got 170 million people who have access to information instead of just word of mouth or Friday prayers so the speed to which information can get out is lightning now in Pakistan but that doesn't mean that it's all factual or responsible in fact if you want the way I try to understand it is to think about what Rosh Limbao and Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs and to be fair Keith Oberman have done to our political system it is Pakistan politics is one that is given to conspiracy theories anyway but now these conspiracy theories just just run like crazy throughout so when you have a Kerry Luger bill and the notion is this is just America's way to get dominance seize our weapons and break up our country that's the belief that runs through the conservative media so it's a very complicated political system a very weak still a very strong professional disciplined military and ISI I never believed is rogue I've always believed it's a part of the army and disciplined it's just army strategy that they reflect and you've got a political and you've only got two opposition parties if you want very simplistically the army and the civilian politicians and the civilian politicians are not because they're considered as I've mentioned earlier as elite and owners captains of industry and the owners of the feudal lands so but then you've got this vast group of people who don't feel anybody is taking care of them and that's the political environment that we're in so when you ask me the question how do we influence this political environment it's enormously difficult because I don't with that kind of a media you've got it's not a matter of just developing a good PR or public diplomacy strategy although I think we intend to $150 million intends to go to public diplomacy but I don't really get it given this environment it's not working through the government if a hundred million people don't trust their government and think that their governments are our puppets anyway and it's not centered on the military I do think I don't want to be pessimistic here I think that Hillary Clinton got it absolutely right she did something that we haven't done in years and years she went out and instead of staying for three hours or one day and leaving the state for three full days as secretary she instead of going in and visiting the president and the prime minister and the chief opposition behind closed doors for two hours and coming out and giving a two minute press briefing leaving the public to say what were they saying to our leaders behind closed doors that they couldn't tell us about our leaders or puppets and Musharraf has regarded a puppet and Sadari has regarded a puppet Keon is very nervous that he will be too she did something different she came out and she said okay I'm going to talk to you students for two hours you businessmen for two hours you journalists ask me anything you want to ask me ask me and the answer she gave three questions which shows the depth of the political sophistication there was black water going to take over the country and why did we want to seize their nukes but she gave tough answers tough love and instead of reacting negatively they loved it it was a very successful visit and if you need evidence we all like to talk about metrics America polls show approval rating jumped 7% after her visit so I think there is a way of approaching Pakistan and I think we need to be attuned to it so that would be one suggestion the other suggestion I've already made and that is not to go with our money with our plans but to go with a true sense of partnership and say help fund in our little way your plans with your smart people innovative ways that help you I think we need to rethink the way we conduct our diplomacy with Pakistan and I think it can be successful I think we need to rethink the way we have the lighting buttons here in this room almost yes if everybody wants to get up and dance please I have been selfishly enjoying asking questions and so now we are going to turn to the audience for some questions Ashley has the microphone and what I ask is that questioners identify themselves try to be fairly limited and I'm also going to ask our panelists to try to be fairly limited in the response so we can get in a bunch of people so we'll start right up here Hi, Barbara Slavin from the Washington Times very good presentations, thank you in President Obama's speech and Hillary Clinton has spoken of this Karzai has spoken of this they've talked about reintegration of some Taliban into the mainstream of Afghanistan do you think it's possible especially given the Pakistani attitude do you think that the Afghan Taliban movement can be divided up say with Haqmatyar or Haqqani perhaps more willing to be rented if not owned than Mala Omar and is this essential if this 18 month strategy is going to work thank you was it directed and to the others please the presidential campaign had one very positive aspect that I think the western media has not noticed now there's a national consensus in Afghanistan that we need a political framework for peaceful and we need to understand the reasons for grievances I think because counterinsurgency demands a very unified insurgency we've been attributing more unity to the insurgency than it has we need to be able to approach the issues distinct provinces of distinctive issues at times even districts of distinctive issues and the critical issues still is the weakness of the government not the strength of the insurgency so if we strengthen the government capability the balance will shift because ordinary people today are caught in a vicious grip of the one side a government that is predatory on the other side insurgency we make the government govern the equation changes and as part of this outreach is essential how the shape will take place needs to be very concrete in terms of things so I would not get to those big names first the critical issue is first local level commanders youth leaders that have been alienated and then build up one caution I've reviewed all the peace agreements that were concluded from 1990 to 2004 and I've written a long article on it these things normally take 3 to 10 years look at Ireland no but the foundations need to be laid it's a complimentary thing the reason for this is a word of caution let's not box ourselves into a definition of success that then we are not going to reach because what Steve is saying is essential 18 months is the point of transition not to begin the point of transition not the end point of this game a lot of the interpretations are the other way around Steve did you have a reaction or should I go to the next question I'll go to the back here if I had some tie it's Mike yes, Mike Pazner, U.S. Senate staff Dr. Hadley you made an interesting point about the impact of a potential terrorist attack going back to the tribal areas I wonder if for any of the panelists what could you quantify more what would be the impact on the United States policy toward Pakistan and this isn't in the realm of the hypothetical we just saw the arrest of Mr. Zazi up in New York and Denver who had reportedly trained in Pakistan so how would that affect our strategy I would ask you because the first place I would look would be some reaction from the congress in terms of legislation and whether they would continue to support aid and assistance to Pakistan at the levels we're talking about and in the right spirit to get to of partnership so I think there's what would be the public opinion reaction and then how would that be manifested in terms of legislation for the congress and you don't know but it's a place you don't want to be can I just add that I think that a lot would depend upon Pakistani reaction immediate reaction I find it somewhat disturbing but in the Pakistani press and among its officials no one's talking about the Hadley case no one in Pakistan and Laxial Taiba no one's really condemning Laxial Taiba and the thought in Pakistan that Laxial Taiba has international goals to spread terrorism internationally isn't considered in Pakistan we know it here there's a big gap and I think we need to close that gap if we're going to get the right response if something terrible did happen who in the back there the gentleman in the brown sweater thank you very much I'm F.T. Haussan from west of America partial to the border region service we have a nine hours of broadcast to the border region area my question is from Ashraf Ghani could you please elaborate on what states can exercise in the coming days to on the Karzai government to deliver and what do you mean by effective partnership on the civilian side thank you very much effective partnership on the civilian side means that each side addresses its corruption problem the model of USAID needs to be fundamentally overhauled if we are going to get an effective partnership the model of delivering through SERP fundamentally revised if we are going to get an effective partnership the model of giving billions of dollars to UN agencies without asking them to disclose what they are doing with that money and accounting for it needs to be fundamentally revised so this is one part the negative elements there is plenty of evidence a lot of it from government accountability office reports pentagons reports are superb in this regard this is probably the last report of the inspector general of the defense department these are documented court cases of corruption one case a road in Logar province was costing 9 million dollars the contractor was paid the increase did to 18 million and the one who was bribing was paying the major 2 million dollars for it it's been in debt it's been established we have dropped 62 points in 4 years in transparency and national's index it's unprecedented in the annals of history no other country has dropped when countries become very corrupt they stay there we have an accomplishment though there is an Afghan poet who has written a poet saying poor Afghanistan even on corruption you could not come number one Somalia beat you we need to change the image what would be the target 100 point upward swing in transparency and national's rating within the next 2 years that is feasible positively we come to design not a quarrel not a blame game but a real set of objectives and show our responsibility Afghanistan is not the country of the united states but go to Helmand you will find the sons of high ranking officials of this government serving as soldiers you will not find the single son or brother of a high ranking government official serving in Helmand as a foot soldier that's the difference here patriotism is manifested itself in terms of international service when their commander in chief tells them to go serve they serve Del Taylor's son is served here remarkable distinction John Taylor's I know a lot of people we need to take responsibility partnership is about us taking the lead to take our partners and show them an exit route the exit route is that we are capable of managing and running our country so this is critical they in turn need to change their mechanisms of support and that they become the catalyst for building of Afghan capabilities and I think this is exactly the right approach that is being hit upon to train our institutions you know our security institutions but also the others it takes two to tango and the two need to agree on all the moves today every move on one side is mismatched by the other so that's fundamentally about changing why don't we move it on yes back here yes Mohammad Adha for VOA television for Pakistan I wanted to ask you about the situation of Pakistan's establishment do you think that financial aid is enough to satisfy Pakistan and to address its concerns in Afghanistan and secondly is it okay to tell Pakistan that U.S. has a long commitment in Afghanistan and then announce a pull out date thank you were you asking Mr. Hadley yes I'll take the first it's interesting if you think about what President Bush said when he announced the surge in Afghanistan and what President Obama said the surge in Afghanistan they weren't that different we're going to surge in troops we're going to secure the population we're going to buy some time for the building of local institutions so that as those institutions gain strength we can begin to pull out based on that success and our troops ultimately can come home with honor and even President Bush began to as we call the time horizon when that would be done and it's interesting President Bush makes his statement in Iraq and everybody ignores the time horizon and says it was all conditions based the conditions will never be met because he wants to stay forever why anyone thought we would want to stay forever in Iraq I don't know but that's what they said President Obama says roughly the same thing and everybody ignores that he's making a commitment any that reductions are conditions based and they focus on the date and say you see it's an exit plan we're out of here and I think probably in retrospect they maybe wish they had been a little less precise about a date because what they have been saying subsequently what the President said in the speech if you read it carefully what Secretary Gates and Secretary Clinton have been saying is well that date is a date when we begin to transfer responsibility which will allow us to begin to come home but what that means in terms of size and everything else will depend on conditions on the ground and there's nothing about rate there's nothing about end date and they have tried to make clear that it will depend on success in Afghans standing up taking responsibility and the United States can then begin to step back as Secretary Gates said we're not going to throw this baby into the swimming pool and then walk away so you know look I think what is important is that the administration make clear to Afghans make clear to Al Qaeda and Taliban to make clear to the Pakistanis and to make clear to our own forces that we are committed to succeeding in this task because it's in the interest of all of us and the President has an important piece of that because in the end of the day it is the President that is the glue that holds all this together and I think he has to make very clear that he personally is committed to this project and is committed to succeeding. I think they've started on that I think the national security principles have done that I think we're going to need to hear a little more from President Obama on that as well. Great. I'm V.O. Ligginger from Bloomberg News I'd like to hear from each of you with General McChrystal and Ambassador Eikenberry scheduled to testify over the next few days on the Hill what do you think they need to say regarding each of their individual areas of responsibility what do they need to say to the American people to the Congress and to the Afghan and Pakistani people? I'll be very brief. They need to say that they're going to work like this that yes they have separate responsibilities but that they are going to do it in an integrated way bringing all elements of U.S. national power together to achieve a common objective and to work hand in glove with our allies and with the Afghan officials. That's what they have got to say that's the message that everybody needs to hear and then they've got to go off and do it. I think they need to convince the American public that the concept of smart power is actually operational that smart power is that use of all national instruments and that these two remarkable individuals who are truly remarkable leaders can work together in perfect unison and bring about those sites. Ambassador Eikenberry's transformation into a civilian is a remarkable event because he's not a general, a former general now serving as ambassador. He's an ambassador that is performing the chief role of a chief diplomat and that in terms of the Afghan public they need to demonstrate that the Afghan public is going to be the center of gravity. Together the two have achieved something very significant a remarkable reduction in the rate of civilian casualties has taken place and that needs to be communicated both for the effort that it's taken and that there will be a lot more concerned about it. Related the point that General McChrystal's paper and also there's a memorandum of understanding signed between General McChrystal and Ambassador Eikenberry on key areas of priority that needs to be communicated in very clear ways because that memorandum again is quite significant in terms of how it's going to be done and they also need I think to lay down the grounds for both London and for Kabul we need two conferences a conference in London where we need to get the international dimensions right the partnership that we've spoken needs to take form then we need a conference in Kabul where the regional and the national dimension really need to become very concrete and this is an opportunity to lay down and they need to assure President Karzai as they have assured them on the ground that now he is the president of Afghanistan that the election period and other issues are over that there is truly a mechanism of reaching out in agreeing on areas of core responsibility and joint responsibility. Well with regards to Pakistan I don't know that these two guys would be the ones to deliver the message but the message needs to be reinforced that our relationship is with the Pakistani people that we think that we believe that that it is a larger problem that includes the whole region including Pakistan but that the solution will come when the aspirations of the Pakistani people are met and we're there as reliable partners well into the future as President Obama said long after the guns have been silenced to work with the Pakistani people on what they need which is energy and jobs and rule of law and safety in their villages. We have a last question here this young Afghan gentleman in the red tie. Thank you for a very insightful presentation. My name is Iba Mayoon and I work for the Institute for the Study of War. The question I have is to pick up from where you left Dr. Ghani you said President Karzai should be given assurances. One of the other tactics in the sort of absence of the political strategy there are two tactics one was civilian search the other that seems to be coming out of the administration is this whole idea of bypassing President Karzai or some way working around them. Is that even possible? Should it be done? The Afghan system is unitary. We are like friends we are not a federal system in Americans if fundamental difficulty grasping unitary systems so part of the elementary education for each person that serves in Afghanistan is to understand our political culture. That political culture is unitary. This does not mean that you endorse any effective centralization. Today we have a dual difficulty we have a dysfunctional center that blocks initiatives. Example a request from a provincial department of education to take a random example could sit in months in the Ministry of Education without being answered. That's dysfunctional this is not a center at work simultaneously you have one of the worst forms of local predatory behavior where a district say in Badakhshan not to take this out consisting of 1,000 families is taken hostage by one commander who forces them to cultivate drugs and pay them in drugs. This problem cannot be solved by bypassing the center. We need to come with a... Afghanistan has been fragmented through ill-designed policies of the international community in the last eight years particularly in the last five because there's an entire second bureaucracy I call it the parallel bureaucracy of NGOs the UN USAID etc. No country will be able to build credible and accountable governance with that kind of a second bureaucracy. The second bureaucracy now needs to be tackled fundamentally structured if we want it. NPRTs again need major revisiting because they were designed for as a two-year temporary device to then be incorporated within the structures of the Afghan government within the Ministry of Finance and Interior instead they've become around unto themselves and as Steve said earlier Secretary General of NATO did not know what they did they asked me to do a speech last year in Spain so I asked for a survey there was no rhyme or rhythm to the PRTs the critical variable predicting it is the personality of the Colonel and the personality of the Governor and when a Colonel leaves it starts all over again so we need to understand that international community cannot go on improvising governance devices that have not been tested we need to come to design arrangements that serve a goal and that's the opportunity but simultaneously a clear message has to go to Mr. Karzay that is the message of the Afghan people the message of the Afghan public needs to be echoed back to Mr. Karzay the Afghan public wants a government that functions and I for one am not willing to serve in the government is going to give the government the hardest time possible if I see any evidence of corruption this is not Washington's fight it's ours because it's the future of our grandchildren that are at stake so I urge every Afghan now to have voice and to demand accountability so that the issue is not taken as an agenda of foreign imposition but as a national demand for an accountable governance and a government that functions that's the only way that we can get changed I think that's the message that needs to be delivered the international community as Wendy was saying earlier regarding Pakistan must define its partner the partner is the Afghan public without having the men and women who is starving to invest back in hope and the question of women is really critical because it's not come for the first time in our history we have over probably close to one million female headed households where the children of these households are likely to be condemned to three or four generations of poverty unless we do something about it and those voices need to be heard Afghanistan is a place unseen Afghans or people are unmet so mythologies are beginning to pervade regarding what Afghans want what we want is what my neighbors in Baltimore or Bethesda wanted a better future for their children safety rule of law predictability our image needs to be rescued and the responsibility of our leadership and all our actors is to rescue this mythologized or mythological image of Afghanistan as the grave of empires or as a people who are interested in violence from violence than any other people let us not forget that fact we sacrifice two and a half millions of our lives to break the former Soviet Union now we want lives that are meaningful and I hope that the partnership that we've been speaking in events like this become the mechanism for bringing that very laudable goal in a goal that is very human into reality yeah this entire two hour session I'm sure you all agree has been a tremendous treat the three of you have spent three fascinating careers furthering the interests of your countries and globally so please join me again in thanking them please also join me at no event like this would be possible without the very hard work of all of our staff at USIP particularly Ashley and Azita my boss Bill Taylor and the rest of the institute that supports all the great work that we're able to do so thank you everybody and thank you all for coming