 Well, thank you all for coming. Good afternoon, a good late afternoon, and good evening to all of you. And thank you for being here for this issues briefing on Afghanistan, the way forward. I'm Ishaan Thirur, a foreign affairs columnist at the Washington Post. And I'm joined today by Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Hina Rabani Khar from Pakistan, and the head of the UN Development Program, Akim Steiner. And without any lengthy preamble, I think we should really get into it. We are all acutely aware of what happened in Afghanistan last year, a collapse that gripped the global imagination and our news media, but then has swiftly receded from the headlines amid all sorts of other crises, not least the war in Ukraine. But of course, a genuine crisis endures, and we're gonna talk through what's happening there, along with perhaps getting some insights on how to work or engage the current political dispensation in Kabul. So I'd like to begin, Mr. Steiner, you were recently in Afghanistan in March. You have seen firsthand the situation on the ground as you were telling me before the session, there's been an astonishing economic collapse, and that has also triggered a whole series of other calamities as well. Could you set the scene for us in terms of what the ordinary of Khan civilian faces right now and what UNDP and other programs and other international organizations are trying to do? Thank you, Shana, and great pleasure to be here with Mr. Khair also. And let me perhaps begin with, where was Afghanistan just before August of last year? It was a developing country, insecure, but with a negotiated exit and handover to the Taliban in visage. So I think the first thing is that what was meant to be a structured and orderly handover, then as we all learned, turned out to be a very chaotic and sudden departure plus takeover. But the country before that was a country that over 20 years had essentially tried to invest in both a securitization, a political project, and a development project. And I think perhaps I want to begin by saying, well, clearly neither on the security nor on the political project cannot be considered a success because clearly it did not deliver on it. But on development, there is a slightly over hasty way of dismissing everything that happened. Some people forget that in July last year, 40% of Afghanistan's civil servants were women. That hundreds of thousands of girls had actually gone to school, had gone on to work, some of them to university. That in terms of rural development and some of the infrastructure, clearly there had been investments. There were development gains. And I think it is first of all important not to congregate these three because those are probably what is keeping at least parts of the Afghan population even able to survive right now. But the public budget was 75% funded by the international community. Overnight those 75%, the billions of dollars were turned off. A new administration took office. But the factor, as I think you will all appreciate, it's difficult to speak of a new government while it is forming itself on the back of such a chaotic situation. And what we have seen really is an almost unprecedented implosion of an economy. I cannot think of another parallel example in the last 30 to 40 years where an entire nation and its economy literally ceased to function in terms of all the modern tenants of what we consider to be an economic system. Central bank ceased to function. Money, cash was no longer circulating. The private banking system collapsed. Government had no funds. Many of the, let's say, most trained civil servants had left the country. So all of that essentially left the Afghan people. The 40 million Afghans close to 40 million in an economic freefall that is without precedent. And this is still the situation to this day. And so when I visited in March, what I found was a country that continues to struggle even with some of the most basic tenants of a development effort. People are, for instance, not able to trade. They're not able to import. You know that the reserves abroad have been, for the moment, seized. You know that there is a sanctions regime in place. And most Afghans are struggling to survive in terms of being able to even earn a basic income. Now in the last few months, we have seen some revenues in government emerge from taxation and so on. They begin to pay civil servants, but largely the international response paid some of the salaries for the health worker staff, UNDP initially in the first month, with a global fund provided salaries for 24,000 health workers. Because this is the backbone of the most fundamental access to health services. Subsequently, WHO and UNICEF have put in place a system to try and finance health workers. All of this however happening, and I'll stop with that, essentially not by being able to work with the government because the Taliban, the authorities in the country, remain de facto authorities. They are not internationally recognized by any member state, therefore also the United Nations cannot recognize them. And so we're essentially engaged in a, let's say, a form of cooperation without recognition and trying to make the best possible for an increasingly desperate Afghan population. I use the term increasingly desperate Afghan population very deliberately. And I want to return to these forms of cooperation. But Minister Kar, over the process of the talks that happened in Doha with the Afghan Taliban, we were told in Washington that this Taliban is not your, the Taliban of 20 years ago, they're more pragmatic, they're not going to return back to the past. They represent something different. And we heard this from some Pakistani officials as well. But now of course we're seeing what's happening, we're seeing what's happened, especially to school girls in Afghanistan. I'd welcome your thoughts on A, the state of education there and what's happening to women's rights. And then of course on how you see the political leadership in Kabul. Okay, yeah, that's a lot of questions. But I will first directly go to the specific question that you asked about the state of education and what's happening to women because I think it's important to get complete clarity on where Pakistan stands on that. Because I think sometimes we get lost in translation and we get sort of judged upon having to deal with the compulsions of geography because unlike many other countries, Pakistan cannot pick itself up and just migrate or just leave. We have 2,600 kilometers of border, an active border with Afghanistan. So it's a state to state relations. And as I said, compulsions of geography. However, on the question of girls and women, now let me take you to where Pakistan is and what Pakistan is. Pakistan is a country which has perhaps highest representation of women in parliament comparable to the Nordic countries. Pakistan is a country which has had a woman, Prime Minister Mohtarama Ben-Zibhuto, a woman Speaker of National Assembly, constitutional post, a woman Foreign Minister, a woman State Bank Governor, women are in the banks, women are obviously getting educated. Women are in equal part of Pakistani lives. Now in a country like ours, see across the border something like this happening, we absolutely cannot condone it and we absolutely do not, we feel threatened by this perhaps much more than someone sitting in New York or Washington DC or London because it has things like this permeate through the border, extremism, extremist thoughts, extremist mindset permeates through the border as we've seen in the past and finds itself somewhere or the other. And as you may know, there are many takers of extremism in countries, in all countries. So we are obviously very threatened by this type of a mindset being just across the border. Now to the bigger problem of where did this come from? Now, the shocking part was of course on how quickly the Afghan government, the Ghani government fell and how quickly the Ashraf Ghani himself fled, right? However, I am surprised if the world would be shocked at that the regime that did take over, how did they take over? And I will tell you the answer to that, the enabling factor, if you look at one single enabling factor for that, it was the 2020, what was considered to be a peace negotiation, but turned out to be a withdrawal agreement. So there are many perhaps wrongs that we can point to, but strategically speaking, if there is something that went fundamentally wrong, it was the conversion of what was supposed to be a peace negotiation into a withdrawal agreement, right? In which you're actually interacting with them even to the extent of who will you issue visas to? Who will you issue passports to? So you're already accepting in 2020 that the takeover or their place in government in the largest way is coming. And from then onwards, I think what has been, as a neighbor, exceptionally distressful to us is that both the incoming regime and the international community leaves us wanting in its reaction. Okay, when Mr. Steiner talked about the collapse of the economy, allow me to say that in some ways, it seems like internationally, because of having a value system, we have enabled at the behest with the explanation of why a value system doesn't allow us to deal with a country which has such a regime, that we were okay with dealing with in 2020 and doing an agreement with, we have enabled the collapse, the absolute collapse of the Afghan economy by holding on to some of the reserves. You're specifically talking about what the Biden administration chose to do. Absolutely, I feel no, I cannot give any explanation to that, because generally it is considered that in order to appease our conscience, we should try and get as many people out of Afghanistan as possible. My question is how many? 180,000? 200,000? One million? What about the 39 million which are left? Are they left to die and be in their own devices? And that reminds me of these interesting conversations that I keep on happening. And this delegation from a European parliament who said, minister, you wouldn't understand, we absolutely are conscience and our principles will not allow us to deal with Afghanistan as it is, because we care about women's education and girls' education. And I said to them, and you would therefore have them starve because you're principally, you believe that they must get educated, right? And as I said, compulsions or geography will not allow us to have that possibility. And of course, when it comes to the regime itself, we've heard very happy words, okay? I mean, post 15th August, whatever was coming out of Doha was as if everything had changed and we find out. And even at that time I said, let's wait for the, this is a good talk, but let's wait for the walk. And so what is really happening is, what is really happening is that there is a bit of brinkmanship, if you allow me to take a few steps back, from both sides, from what I would consider the international community largely, enabling their collapse is not smart, okay? Who will go and fix it? Then again, we are not learning our lessons from history. So from the international community it is, the messaging is wrong and therefore we will, in some ways, enable the collapse by the economic decisions that we've taken. And from the regime, it seems to me that there is fence sitting and brinkmanship as, oh, they are not assisting us, so now we will ensure that we will do worse to our own population. So in many ways, it's unexplainable, but what we have, and I would like to perhaps end with this, but I think we have all shown that none of us have been able to learn any lessons from history. And as someone, as a country, as a state, that shares 2,600 kilometers border with Afghanistan, which has really suffered from not two years or even 20 years, we are talking 40 years. We're talking post-Soviet Union invasion and then the reaction of the world and then going, putting in the Mujahideen, you have the option of plugging out, by you, I mean, broadly international community. Now what we are left to do is to pick up the pieces, both how the mines have been polluted with extremism, the situation that has been created on the ground, its impact on us, so as I said, whether you call it revenge of geography, you call it compulsion of geography, and then we are held to be in this very uncomfortable place of holding the brief, we don't hold any brief of them. I mean, they are quite opposed or opposite of the value system that Pakistan wants to propagate. And frankly speaking, the value system that the state of Pakistan currently has fully espoused through its constitution. I want to get back to you, Mr. Sainab, but I have to stick with this. These are some of the figures in power in Kabul now, in the top ranks of the Afghan Taliban, are known entities to the Pakistani state. They had shelter in Pakistan. Surely there is a question to be asked about the Pakistani legacy in protecting this wing of the Taliban, especially as you now have to confront a security situation that they seem to be enabling with the Pakistani Taliban attacking all sorts of targets within Pakistan. Is the critics could say that Pakistan is reaping what it sowed? Yeah, I mean, that would be the simplistic view and that would be a luxury that critics have. It's a luxury that we don't have because we have to live through the decisions that are made 20 years back in the reaction to 9-11 and how that war came out and how it was played. I'll take you no further than the SIGAR report, which has recently been released, the interim report and the report in 2018 and the report before that, which tells you of the flaws and the strategic mistakes which were made, which tells you how the Afghan army, so in many ways, what you refer to is this, is perhaps one of the biggest problems because as someone who was from the region, as a country which was from the region, which was telling the world, look, perhaps you should engage with them early on. Born, we live up to that. We said, let's engage, let's normalize, let's let them be part of, because they are Afghans after all, right? And the world thought, oh, no, no, no, Pakistan, doing its regular thing. And then when this, putting up a 300,000 Afghan army, which according to the SIGAR report is basically an image of the US army and was using the same technological advances that only perhaps the US army can do, when all of those mistakes were made, we were considered to be the ones who were assisting these forces. And then we have the 2020 agreement, which the Pakistan, you know, that doesn't say the government of Pakistan and whatever nomenclature, very interesting and very long that you use for the Afghan Taliban at that time, it was the United States of America. And again, I forget the nomenclature, but it was two long lines of what you decided to call them. So I think this thing about Pakistan was the one who was assisting them. I think that is probably been proven by history not to be the case, because Pakistan would not be, if we had the type of control, let me just put it this way, if we had the type of control that the world associated with us for 20 long years, right? Then we would not be suffering from the security situation that we're suffering right now. If our dream come true, then our dream come true would translate into the dream coming into stability and peace in Pakistan, which hasn't been the case. So I think there's a tendency to try and project all the wrongs that took place in this Afghanistan experiment on Pakistan. And please allow me to say that I think the stated objective of this mission changed drastically within three presidents, right? And then as someone who heard many international delegations tell us repeatedly, our first priority is women education, is girls education. We have to protect the women of Pakistan. Then you hear President Biden tell everyone, we're not here to protect women. That's not our goal and objective. So I will absolutely end with this by saying that I think really the malaise is that many of the domestic compulsions that are felt in Congresses and parliaments abroad translate into policy in faraway lands, which does not have any direct repercussion on where the policy is being made, but has immense repercussion on the surrounding area, region, surrounding countries and the people and the population itself. Now you can extract, you can change that policy immediately and extract and do a pullout, which might be as hasty as unplanned and live with the repercussions of reputational hazard. We have much more than reputational hazard to live with. Understood. Mr. Saini, if the Biden administration unlocked some of these billions of dollars of Afghan funds that they have frozen, what sort of impact would that have at this point on the Afghan economy and for Afghan society? Well, putting aside for a moment of how one would do this and how the money would, in a sense, flow back to Afghanistan, I think there is no doubt that if these funds were injected into stabilizing Afghanistan's economy, if these funds were then become available to re-establish a working financial system, including a private financing and banking system, then clearly it would have a significant impact because right now you have to imagine you're living in a country where essentially much of the institutional functioning of a government has initially seized from local to national level. Your banks are de facto closed, one is functioning. You don't even have cash in your hand. You are not able to import, you're not able to sell in markets, except in a highly informal, survival economy. So clearly, this is a country that has no reserves, no funds, and not even the financial means with which to function. So this, without doubt, would have a major impact. And I think it is also the decision of the Biden administration to put forward a scheme that would release three billion, as I understand it, once the details have been worked out, in order to essentially allow the country to have access to what are genuinely its resources. And in that sense, I think it would be a very significant impact. And in the absence of that sort of assistance, can you talk a bit more about some of the projects that your organization is involved with, and some of the ways in which activities outside of the governmental realm can be supported in Afghanistan on the ground? Well, I think in the absence of that, what we have seen the international community do is first of all, leave Afghanistan, then define terms of engagement with Afghanistan, as if on the other side of the table there was a negotiating partner, when really there was a group of people who were basically one over the other side in their own view. So the first two, three months regrettably, there was very little dialogue and a great deal of non-communication or cross-purpose communication. Now let me be very clear, just as you did, Minister, just now, the United Nations, starting with the Secretary General, the General Assembly, us as individual agencies, we're unequivocal about the fundamental human rights that we expect a country like Afghanistan to uphold and to respect, and that includes unequivocally the right of girls to attend education institutions, and not just primary school, but also secondary school, their ability to pursue careers, to go to university. And it is without doubt, I think a grave misjudgment that up to now the Taliban have not fulfilled the commitment that they have repeatedly made to their own public, but also the international community, that they would reopen the secondary schools. Primary schools are reopened, girls can in significant parts of the country attend school. Now interesting enough, in parts of Afghanistan, even secondary schools are open. So this is a large country, and it is governed through different, let's say, lenses at the moment. So I think the first thing that we have to re-establish is a rule of law in the sense of fundamental rights. And I think this is perhaps the greatest single litmus test that the international community holds up to the Taliban, and I think quite rightly. But what is not correct is that in a situation of such chaos and disruption, essentially an international community retreats into a purely humanitarian mode, and does not recognize that this is a development emergency and economic emergency, in which if you leave 40 million people essentially alone in this economic implosion, you are creating the very scenarios that you set out to avoid, that people would be displaced in their own country, become refugees, start moving to other countries, radicalization, polarization. So I think from the beginning, and this was not easy, as UNDP, we took a very different approach. We in fact began preparing for that day because as you said, Minister, this was a negotiated agreement. So for us, the question was, what would happen on day one after this agreement was fulfilled, and the Taliban would rule the country. And we basically anticipated this economic implosion and put forward a way of saying, look, you cannot feed 40 million people with food from outside the country. You have to start essentially stabilizing a people's economy, which is where do people survive at the moment? On their land, in their homes, in their houses with their small scale enterprises and businesses. And therefore we needed to put together a program to stabilize and support and bring cash back into these livelihood dependent enterprises. And to some surprising micro-enterprises, in particular in small enterprises, are significantly run by women. So when I visited Afghanistan, I traveled to Masai Sharif and I actually met with women entrepreneurs with whom we are working. And the Women's Chamber of Commerce is our counterpart because we are with none of our funding working through any central ministry that is currently run by the de facto authorities. With a mutual acceptance, we operate in direct implementation mode. We bring finance resources to cash for work, rehabilitation of local canals, trying to look at the opportunity of bringing solar panels in because much of Afghanistan has no access to electricity. Off-grid solar is a way in which you're not only bringing electricity there, you actually create the opportunity to irrigate fields. As I flew from Kabul to Masai Sharif, it was fascinating in an utterly dry country. Whenever you saw a green field right next to it were solar panels for pumping water. This is how you help a country to survive a moment of extraordinary political disruption in which many things are happening that are difficult for the international community to accept and even as you said, minister, to a country right next door. But we cannot abandon 40 million Afghans simply on the principle of moral outrage. And that is why the United Nations immediately stepped back into Afghanistan and became the backbone of an international community's presence. And whether it is UNDP, whether it's 350 staff, whether it is the World Food Program, UNICEF, UNHCR, we are there because we see the desperation of Afghan people. And while the international community, in a sense, finds a way with the Taliban to conclude a process of political rapprochement, we are trying to essentially intervene in an economy that has to keep people alive. So minister, about that rapprochement, you seem to indicate that your government has very little leverage over the de facto authorities in Kabul. What is the way forward then? And if it doesn't involve recognition, what do governments need to do and what does Pakistan hope to do in terms of improving the situation there? Okay, I think the first thing that governments all over the world need to do is to not enable the impulsion that Mr. Shataina was talking about, right? So I know, and I'm sure he will be able to give you evidence for that, that even international agencies have to use stashes of cash and literally have cash come in and banking channels not open, right? So you're basically saying that we will, we are willing to maybe get scraps of fish for you and keep on feeding you a little bit of fish just so that you're alive and you don't really stop breathing. But we will enable the collapse of the economy. So if there are any low-hanging foods such as perhaps trade once and could potentially become the hub that it was once meant to become. And that if there's any scope for small enterprise, anyone can do anything, there will be no banking channel, there will be nothing that anyone can do, right? So just as a first, stop enabling the collapse would be a good thing that we can all perhaps contribute to. Now this other thing about using this moral outrage to try and get solutions is a little bit difficult and eventually the problem remains what it was during the last 20 years also that we all rely on each other and what is Pakistan saying? What is the U.S. saying? What is London saying? What is Germany saying, right? And not what are the Afghans saying? And this whole peace negotiation because the intra-Avgan dialogue which was supposed to precede the withdrawal agreement or the peace agreement between the United States of America and the Afghan Taliban did not, it did not precede it, it did not precede, right? So that I think was strategically if you look back, perhaps one of the biggest reasons. So what options are we left to deal with? I mean, we as I said, have to always because of the compulsion of geography have a pragmatic approach where we are a state which cannot change our geography and we may not, we do not like the values that they espouse to. They are frankly speaking dangerous for our polity, for our country, for not only the women and the men for peace stability, but you want to ensure that the implosion doesn't happen in a way that, you know, the impact of it is even worse. So there are no easy answers. I would say enable the economy would be a responsibility that we all have. It's not a matter of choice. So spending $1 trillion on a 20-year adventure and then freezing their $10 billion reserves doesn't sound very smart to me, right? So I think it's important that we create the circumstances for the Afghans to be able to rebuild whatever. And the negotiations will have to happen between the Afghans. And I'm less worried about the signs or the messages that Taliban are sending to the international community by not opening schools and more worried about the signs and the messages that they're sending to their own people and to their own women and to their own girls. And what type of a projection of a society are they being an enabler of more people to come in and to really have a cohesive society? I think it's quite the opposite and it's a dangerous situation. So we have to enable a functional economy, have our ass try and negotiate on the ass, try and pressurize them as much as possible. But right now the state that we're in, which I described right in the beginning, of this brinkmanship between the international community and the Taliban is perhaps the only people it is endangering is not you and I as much. Me, of course it is. I don't, you know, a little bit. But it's the Afghan people. They're the ones who are suffering. And I think once we wake up to that reality, enabling an economy and not creating parallel structures of aid forever. So it's like, it's almost like the strategy is, we will keep on feeding you bits and pieces of fish, but never allow you to. Can I just step in here for a moment? Because this is very important. One thing is humanitarian aid, which is essentially providing relief, saving lives. I just want to be very clear that as UNDP, we argued for a very different approach. One, there was a need for humanitarian aid. Let's be clear, I mean the situation in terms of food, supplies, et cetera, is desperate. But what we have advocated from the beginning is that the international community needs to take a wiser and more informed approach. Because precisely by not investing in people's ability to survive to earn a livelihood with some dignity, while a, you know, national government structure regroups and reestablish itself, will not only cause immense suffering and harm, it will also trigger precisely the kind of insecurity that you were referring to. And that is why UNDP from the beginning argued very strongly, but could not persuade many capitals that this was a moment where, and this is what the Afghan people, the women and the men that I met during my visit said, look, we don't need charity. We need help to start rebuilding our economy. This is going to be a very difficult decade. But the rebuilding starts with us, the women entrepreneurs, the widows I met who look after seven or eight people in their family, who employ 20 other women who have seven or eight people. You know, it takes so little money to enable them to restart their micro business. It takes so little money compared to what was spent before in a security approach to bring electricity to remote villages so that this most fundamental drive of development can actually enable people to survive. You know, people survive despite dysfunctional governments. And this is a situation where people are in survival mode. And while a government is reconstituting itself, we need to, with wisdom and foresight, invest here, not because we are aligned in any way in terms of politics, but it is in part also a responsibility because you can't turn your back after 20 years and say, well, this is not our problem anymore. First of all, it will come back to bite you. And secondly, it is, quite frankly, morally not acceptable. And so investing in that kind of engagement, and I completely agree, it's not to create a parallel state, but it is at the moment in the absence of a political agreement with the international community, the only way is to reach the people themselves. And that is exactly what they said, leaders in the private sector. And let me also say, I traveled to Kabul, I traveled to Masai Sharif. At no point was I constrained in my contacts. I met with women's chamber of commerce leaders. I met with women entrepreneurs. I met with civil society leaders, private sector leaders. I had a public workshop in Kabul where these conversations are being held about how on earth are we going to survive the next three months? And I think that is where we have often made mistakes in this crisis. When we retreat as an international community, we put people on a drip, so to speak. And in this instance, the World Bank could not function, but there was over a billion dollars lying in the World Bank of Development Funds for Afghanistan that were simply frozen for eight months while we watched the economy implode. And that is where I think we need to learn some lessons, which is not to be expedient, not to be tolerant of extremist views that simply take women out of schooling, but also not to be naive that by simply withdrawing, we are helping any woman or girl in Afghanistan. Thank you on that note. We could double this conversation in length and I'm so sorry that we're out of time. I'd love to take some questions from the audience and my apologies for not facilitating that earlier. But thank you so much, Mr. Sainah. Thank you so much, Minister Khar. And I hope this is a conversation we can keep on having and extend in the days to come in Davos. So thank you very much for all of you. Thank you. Thank you.