Valentina Pasquali

Washington D.C. – In an effort to identify the causes of, and possible solutions to the growing divide between public opinions in the United States and the Muslim world, Juan Cole discussed his most recent work, Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), at a book launch hosted by the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C. Assessing the damage on Muslim perceptions of America inflicted by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq of 2003, Cole argued that a withdrawal, albeit slow, of U.S. troops will contribute significantly to improving relationships with the region at large.

A professor of history at the University of Michigan, fluent in several Middle Eastern languages, and a frequent commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, Cole tried to extricate the causes of the growing disenchantment with the United States among the Muslim public, despite the many alliances the U.S. entertains in the Middle East and across the Muslim world. Take Indonesia for example, suggested Cole. According to a series of polls conducted over time by the Pew Charitable Trust and Gallup, in 2000 75% of Indonesians held a positive view of the United States. This figure fell to 15% in 2004 and has now regained some ground hitting 37% in 2009, still only half of what it was nine years earlier.

Cole believes that, alongside the languishing stalemate in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the occupation of Iraq devised by the Bush Administration is heavily responsible for this dramatic change in attitudes. In Cole’s most conservative estimate, 300,000 Iraqis have been killed during the war, as a result of fighting and infrastructure failures caused by military operations. Not to count the orphans, the widows and the millions of displaced citizens the war left behind. Additionally, scandals like that of the prison at Abu Grahib became major issues for Muslims around the world. “In an effort to curb the insurgency using harsh questioning techniques and torture, the Bush Administration ended up creating huge new numbers of insurgents,” Cole said at the Middle East Institute.

According to Cole, the U.S. needs to accept blame for a sort of idleness, the lack of a prompt and effective response to the deterioration of the situation on the ground (Cole reported that Sweden, for example, without having anything to do with the invasion, has already accepted 40,000 Iraqi immigrants.) Cole holds the American corporate media partially responsible for the some of the disinformation that kept the American people from understanding more about the tragedy that was unfolding. “We are not well served by our corporate media. I don’t think the U.S. public was ever aware of what the Iraq war really was for the Iraqi people,” lamented Cole. TV networks in particular had a tendency to sanitize the war, showing images of the craters that would be left by the bombs, but not of the blood and the corpses and the spare limbs that dominated the scene immediately following the explosion. This imagery, instead, made it regularly on outlets such as Al Jazeera. Because of the sanitization of the more gruesome aspects of the war, Cole believes that the human costs of the U.S. military engagement in Iraq were never fully recognized at home.

As all of this is on the minds of the Iraqis, and of people across the Muslim world, U.S. military presence in Iraq has, according to Cole, become utterly unacceptable. Yet, while polls show a certain amount of support among Muslims for violent retaliation against the U.S. armed forces based in the Middle East, even those who feel more strongly about the issue do not express any desire to ever hit the United States homeland. Mostly what people want is withdrawal, which is good news according to Cole, especially since President Obama seems determined to go through with it. To be fair, Cole did not argue that all Americans must necessarily disappear from Iraq at once, something that those he nicknamed “withdrawal extremists” are calling for. Cole simply claimed that Muslims would welcome a steady and consistent reduction of armed forces deployed in Iraq.

While being extremely critical of the policies of the Bush Administration, Cole also recognized that the situation in Iraq has improved and that U.S. forces exercise today far more command and control then ever before. However, he insisted that the relative stabilization of the country should not be understood as vindicating the invasion. “It would be like saying that, when the black plague began subsiding in medieval Europe, the Norwegian rat had been vindicated,” Call remarked ironically.

Overall, Cole’s present assessment is that Iraq has been building some fundamental capabilities and that there is increasing promise that it might come back together and at least provide for its own security. “I’m somewhat optimistic that Iraq might get its act together and that a U.S. withdrawal could actually be possible without ensuing disaster,” Cole suggested. The one issue that remains unresolved and that could create hurdles in the years ahead is the Arab-Kurd relationship, which is again showing signs of distress. The new American Administration should also be aware that, even in the best-case scenario of a fully recovering Iraq that maintains a positive relationship with Washington, relations between Baghdad and Teheran will continue to be warmer than the U.S. would like. “I think the U.S. will have to suck it up, because the Bush Administration created an Iran that is more powerful in the Middle East than it used to be,” argued Cole. What the U.S. can and should do, according to the University of Michigan’s professor, is to ensure a more hands-on leadership than the previous administration was able to practice. “I hope President Obama and Vice-President Biden will take more active control of what happens including in trying to tackle the case of the Kurds,” explained Cole.

Asked only in the Q&A session his opinion on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Cole did not even try to hide the hopelessness he feels about the situation: “I’m very pessimistic about the conflict. I really don’t see an end to it,” he admitted. Describing the newly formed Israeli government as the “farthest right we have seen in history,” Cole predicted that it could be decades before a solution is reached. Cole foresees three possible scenarios. He finds it unlikely that an agreement will be found on a variation of the two-state solution. Also unlikely, but not as much as one might think, is the apocalyptic view that Israelis will proceed with the expulsion of the Palestinians from Palestine, which would trigger a conflict of enormous proportion throughout the region. Finally, and more likely, Cole believes that we are about to witness a long period of, what he described as “apartheid,” which could continue for two to three decades. This would not be a stable long term solution, and it would probably attract increasingly strict sanctions on Israel, maybe not from the U.S. but certainly from the Europeans. But, according to Cole, Israel is really not capable of surviving without trading with Europe and, at some point, the conflict would just end with a one-state solution, where Palestinians will be granted Israeli citizenship. Apparently, one-third of Palestinians already appear willing to accept it, showing that this third scenario might be the more likely, albeit in the very long run.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – Almost eight years after aircrafts flown by terrorists hit the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C., the U.S.-led ‘war on terror’ is far from won and Al-Qaeda, identified as the perpetrator of those and many other attacks on American military forces as well as civilians, has grown into the name-brand for an international franchise of increasingly decentralized terrorist groups.

Estimates on the overall cost of the so-called ‘war on terror’ vary widely and range from the $700 billion calculated by the Congressional Research Service to the about $4 trillion some private analysts claim have been spend. This money includes budget appropriations for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other military operations decided by the Bush Administration in response to 9/11. We are talking about a rather large sum, independent of the exact amount; which begs the uncomfortable question of how effectively this money has been used and with what results.

“Al-Qaeda probably is weaker than it was in 2001, because its leadership has been on the run and it has suffered losses of much of its cadre,” Paul Pillar says to Washington Prism in an e-mail interview. Pillar is a former CIA and National Intelligence officer and a visiting professor at Georgetown University where he teaches security studies.

American anti-terrorism operations have been focused on the military structure of Al-Qaeda, and on its leadership. The long list of targeted assassinations of the organization’s high-level officials, (for example Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s, Al-Qaeda’s number one in Iraq, in 2006), is a testimony to this strategy.

“The elimination of a number of senior Al-Qaeda militants has damaged the network,” argues Paul Wilkinson in a separate interview, “but the damage is likely to be repaired very rapidly.  There is no evidence that Al-Qaeda is short of new recruits or experienced operatives.” Wilkinson is a former professor of International Relations and former Director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He’s one of Europe’s foremost experts on Al-Qaeda and terrorist networks.

The fact is that, however painful a setback the removal of senior operatives might be for Al-Qaeda, the organization has shown a strong track record in filling vacancies at mid-to-senior-levels. Moreover, Al-Qaeda has repeatedly shown itself able to reorganize after major blows.  “They suffered a major setback in Iraq but they have consolidated their position in Pakistan and are expanding their influence and pressure in Africa, including not only the Horn of Africa but also in West Africa,” claims Wilkinson.

As a result, it is hard to say what the overall balance of targeted assassinations might be. For example, what is the real effect of the operation carried out by the CIA that reportedly killed Abu Laith al-Libi, one of Al-Qaeda’s most senior officials, in a frontier province of Pakistan at the end of last year? “The loss of valuable experience probably is a net minus for the group, although as with any organization, the possibility of upward mobility and fresh blood can be an offsetting advantage,” Paul Pillar explains.

Moreover, while targeting Al-Qaeda’s central structure might hamper the activities of the ‘parent’ cell, it simultaneously propels the outgrowth of many smaller and far flung offspring. “We have noticed that, beginning with 9/11 and then continuing with the attacks in London, Madrid and Mumbai, we are experiencing more of the phenomenon that Mark Sageman called ‘the bunch of guys,’” argues Gary LaFree during a telephone interview. LaFree is the Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a center of excellence of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security based at the University of Maryland. The result of this American strategy intensely focused on “Al-Qaeda central” has been increased activity on the part of people that have very little or almost no contact between one another or with the Al-Qaeda’s leadership. “They are increasingly like a decentralized franchising operation,” says LaFree, “which is very much alive and well.”

This increasing decentralization is changing the definition of terrorism, and it creates problems for those experts and academics that try to categorize the activities of terrorist groups. “The definition of what Al-Qaeda really is and what can be counted as Al-Qaeda’s actions is especially problematic in Iraq. In this country the violence is so widespread that it is very difficult to separate out what might be just military actions, insurgencies, ordinary crime or terrorism,” LaFree explains. He outlines the challenges he faces in recording attacks in Iraq to his database of over 80,000 incidents of terrorism that have happened all over the world since 1970. While more traditionalist terrorist groups, such as the Irish IRA, would normally claim responsibility for their action (55% of LaFree’s 80,000 recorded attacks have a clear attribution,) Al-Qaeda rarely does the same. In Iraq, for example, after the U.S. invasion of 2003 terrorist cells claimed responsibility for only 9% of all episodes of violence. This significantly complicates the job of those who are tasked with assessing the fluctuating strength of Al-Qaeda and the developments in its internal power structure.

Overall, LaFree is convinced that the U.S. has been relatively successful in weakening the leadership of Al-Qaeda. “The part that we probably have been much less successful with is stopping the social movement that has grown around Al-Qaeda,” he argues. According to LaFree, removing the opponent’s leadership has always been a critical strategy of conventional war-fighting, but is not as true anymore. “Hitting the opponent’s leadership doesn’t have the same meaning when there is a fair amount of support and sympathy for the kind of ideas that are being propounded,” he says.

LaFree’s START Center, in partnership with worldpublicopinion.org, conducted several surveys of public opinion in the Middle East: “We have found a fair amount of support from the general population for either Al-Qaeda or ideas associated with it,” explains LaFree. Worldpublicopinion.org, managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, is a consortium of research centers studying the response of global public opinion to international developments. The results of the latest round of polling, released on February 24^th, show for example that large majorities throughout the Muslim world agree with Al-Qaeda’s goal of pushing U.S. military forces out of predominantly Muslim countries. This is true for 87 percent of Egyptians, 64 percent of Indonesians, and 60 percent of Pakistanis. The survey also indicates that Muslim public opinion overwhelmingly rejects the use of attacks on civilians as a tactic to pursue these goals. Nevertheless, this poll illustrates that some of Al-Qaeda’s claims resonate well beyond its military operatives and to ordinary people throughout the Muslim world. Substantial numbers, in some cases majorities, of those interviewed by START and worldpublicopinion.org even approve of attacks on American troops based in Muslim countries.

The lack of a more comprehensive approach on the part of the U.S., one that would address the social implications of Al-Qaeda rather than its military prowess alone, has resulted in a three-legged and inconclusive war, at least thus far. “The organization is not crippled.  Even less crippled is the wider radical Islamist movement, which extends well beyond Al-Qaeda,” argues Paul Pillar. And Wilkinson echoes him: “I suspect that the prediction of a fatal schism in the network is premature.”

Gary LaFree is wary of an exclusively military approach to fighting international terrorism. “Simply going after what the military calls ‘the bad guys,’ has little impact on people living in a remote part of Pakistan or Iraq or Afghanistan,” he warns. Instead, the U.S. should pay more attention to winning over people’s hearts and minds. “We have to remember that our opponents are providing social services, that they actually have a presence in the communities. If this battle is lost, then it is likely that the whole war will be lost too,” argues LaFree.

Of the specific policies undertaken by the Bush Administration, Paul Pillar appreciates the increased attention paid to security countermeasures on American territory as the most effective step taken in recent years. “What has not worked has been the outgoing administration’s tendency to lump all terrorism into a single category and to use a ‘either you’re for us or for the terrorist’ approach,” Pillar argues.

According to Pillar, the new Obama Administration should “quietly discard the harmful and misleading ‘war on terror’ terminology.” In his opinion, this rhetoric has played into the view put forward by extremists of a religious war in which the United States is waging war on Islam.  For Gary LaFree, the new U.S. Government must look for international partners. “The idea that one country can go at it alone without international cooperation is a dangerous one,” he says. LaFree concludes on a quasi-optimist note, by recalling the spontaneous outburst of global support for the U.S. that followed 9/11, and which has been squandered thereafter: “the world community as a whole is not happy with random violence and people being tortured and killed, no matter who is behind it.”

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

The results of two rounds of U.S.-led polling of public opinion in Iran, conducted in 2006 and 2008, portray a moderate Iranian people. The studies show Iranians as relatively pleased with their own system of government and electoral system, although critical of certain aspects of it. Iranians appear open to multilateralism and international organizations, even in the realm of human rights. While they are eager to push forward with the nuclear program, they don’t necessarily want to develop nuclear weapons. They long to be treated as an important regional actor but don’t wish for regional hegemony. They are suspicious of terrorist groups and even hold a generally positive view of the American people. In this overall temperate picture, deeply rooted animosity toward the U.S. Government remains as a fundamental component of the Iranian identity.

While Iran’s presidential elections approach, and as the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress discuss opportunities for an overture toward Teheran, Washington Prism’s Valentina Pasquali spoke to Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org and the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) of the University of Maryland, about his experience assessing the Iranian psyche. Mr. Kull is a political psychologist who studies world public opinion on international issues. He directed both the 2006 and the 2008 surveys in Iran.

Valentina Pasquali: What would you say was the most striking result of your two rounds of surveys in Iran?

Steven Kull: What comes through quite strongly is the extent to which Iranians are not in a revolutionary mindset. There is this image of Iranians being swept up by the kind of zeal one associates with the early days of the Bolsheviks, that they have an ideology that they are aiming to spread. I just don’t see any evidence of this, in the polling data and the focus groups. Iranians are supportive of an Islamic state, but they are also reaching out to the West in a variety of ways: they endorse democracy and human rights, and endorse changes for the role of women. They are evolving and trying to integrate these liberal ideas into their own system. But it is a struggle; they are not, by any means, ready to abandon their Islamic roots. They perceive the West, particularly the United States, as exerting a destabilizing effect on them and making it more difficult for them to find their way. In short, on the one hand, the number of people who truly identify with the revolutionary Islamic mindset is quite small. On the other, I should also underscore that the idea that Iranians, underneath it all, love America, love the West, and can’t wait for the current government to fall so that they can become a western-style democracy, is also a dream unsupported by reality.

VP: Where do Iranian people stand on the nuclear issue?

SK: Both in the polling and the focus groups we found widespread determination on the part of the Iranians to acquire a capacity to enrich uranium, combined with a strong sense of the constraints that should be put on developing a nuclear weapon. A fairly large majority perceives that developing a nuclear weapon would be contrary to the principles of Islam. The Iranian elite and religious leaders have put forward this view and it would be very difficult for them to change course. Maybe public opinion doesn’t determine their decisions, but there is something to be said about the normative environment the leadership has created, rooted in the idea that it would not be legitimate to acquire nuclear weapons. I think it would require a significant trigger for them to switch course, something would have to happen that dramatically increased the threat to Iran. It’s quite unlikely that they would just abruptly cross that line.

Now, it is also clear that the Iranians are aware of the fact that having a nuclear energy program serves more purposes than just nuclear energy. They want to be one step closer to having nuclear weapons capability. They perceive that this would give them a number of benefits: greater status and a deterrent effect on other parties. Moreover, there is a widespread perception that neighboring countries are not complying with the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iranians think that others are secretly developing nuclear weapons and that the NPT regime is fragile, and, as a result, they want to be well positioned should the NPT regime collapse.

VP: In the discussion of your work in Iran, you addressed the overstated perception Iranians have of American power in the world. Were you able to assess what this perception was born out of?

SK: The majority of Iranians we polled think the U.S. controls most of what happens in the world. In the focus groups we did, some of the views that were expressed were particularly potent, for example the idea that the U.S. controls Al-Qaeda. Why? I don’t have an easy answer to that. It is a belief that seems to have a quasi-religious connotation. When Iranians use the term ‘the Great Satan,’ they honestly describe how they perceive the U.S.; something like a cosmic principle, and not just an ordinary state that happens to be rather rich and well armed. Certainly the long history of the U.S. having a highly intrusive role in Iran matters. In general, I would say that there is a tendency in that part of the world toward conspiracy theory, a tendency to see complex organizing themes behind the surface of things. Even on the Al Jazeera website there is a section called conspiracy theory. With respect to Iranians in particular, there also is a history of discovering at a later time that America was behind something that they had not previously assumed. And so it has become a kind of default position to assume that America is behind something. Iranians’ perception of being under siege works as an important glue holding their society together. I think the best comparison to try understanding Iran is America shortly after 9/11. America was so cohesive, and there was very little criticism of the government. All the polls showed that the people’s attitude toward the government or everything American became much more positive. It’s not that people were lying, or making things up. But when people feel threatened, they tend to huddle closer together. Iran has that same quality, constantly feeling under siege.

VP: What do you think is the effect of international sanctions on the psyche of the Iranian people?

SK: It’s not something we polled on directly, but based on my experience, sanctions contribute to this generalized sense of being under pressure by the West. It also justifies the economic failures of the current government and it feeds into this idea that the U.S. is hostile to Islam itself and is out to undermine it.

VP: What was the people’s view of President Ahmadinejad, at least at the time of your most recent survey?

SK: About two-thirds of the people we interviewed at the beginning of 2008 expressed a favorable opinion. Because we heard so much about people coming to Iran and hearing negative views of the president we proofed further and divided people according to income and education. People with higher education or higher income were not as positive, they were more divided about Ahmadinejad. And those tend to probably be the people that Westerners encounter more often when they come to Tehran.

VP: How would you explain the animosity of the Iranian people toward the U.S. Government?

SK: I think it is important to recognize how deep the roots of this animosity are and how far back they go. For many people in Iran the experience of the Shah was a very negative one and the U.S. was always associated with it. I don’t think other Muslim countries have a history that could trigger that depth of animosity. However, it is also true that Iran has a stronger than average attraction to the west. It’s kind of a complex love/hate relation, which you can find broadly in the Muslim world but is more common in Iran. There is some magnetism, while, at the same time, animosity toward the U.S. plays a huge role in the structure of society. So much that it would be difficult to break away from it. Many politicians and leaders embrace this national narrative rooted in a negative relationship with the U.S. An effort to change this approach would rattle fundamental structures in Iran, and could be very destructive to the Iranian identity.

I do think that there is a genuine desire among most Iranians to improve relations; the question is whether or not this can be done in a way that does not make Iranians feel like they are just submitting. They have a strong sense of pride and any agreement would need not to be received as some kind of defeat, or capitulation. I think that the proposition that Tom Pickering, and others, have put forward as far as the nuclear weapons program, to multilateralize it or to create some kind of structure with intrusive inspections and a limit capacity to enrich uranium, would go over. We polled on it and the majority of Iranians said they would accept it. And it has been alluded to by a few Iranian leaders. To actually bring it about would probably require a more complex bargain touching on a wide array of components, as for example the removal of some or all of the economic sanctions. From the first to the second poll we conducted in Iran, we found an increase in the readiness to support steps that would improve relations with the U.S., such as growing diplomatic contacts and more people-to-people exchanges. Probably, some combination of removal of economic sanctions, limited enrichment capacity with highly intrusive inspections, and greater cultural contacts, could be a package that, from all the indications I have, would be feasible. Clearly, giving up the idea of regime change is a key part of this grand bargain. I don’t have poll data to show this but, from everything I see, the Iranian people as well as the Islamic regime find the rhetoric of regime change annoying and threatening. Iranians don’t react thinking that the U.S. is simply going after their government but not after them. Rather, they see this as part of the American attempt to undermine their way of life. And they identify with the regime. I think this is the most important thing that U.S. government leaders can understand better. When we threaten the Iranian government, the Iranian people feel threatened too.

VP: According to your study, Iranians view most terrorist organizations in a negative light. However, this doesn’t apply to Hezbollah and Hamas, outlining a difficult relationship with Israel. What is your understanding of the general perception of Israel among regular Iranian people?

SK: There is a very negative view. The polling numbers are extremely negative and there is definitely a lot of hostility. It’s also striking that, while Iranians reject attacks on civilians quite strongly, when asked about Palestinians attacking Israeli civilians they are more divided. I think that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very engaging to Iranians, and other Muslims, because it is a very distinct and vivid narrative of Muslims being victimized, in their mind, by a Western based force that ultimately works on behalf of the United States. It’s not so much that they care about the Palestinians per se, but they identify with the Palestinians and the conflict strikes a very strong emotional chord.

But in all honesty, I don’t think you would find the desire to annihilate the state of Israel to be the majority opinion in Iran. My impression is that Iranians would probably be fine with the two-state solution, and that the Arab initiative that is in play right now would be attractive to them. I don’t see any real indication that Iranians are dead-set on some kind of maximal outcome where Israel is eliminated. They don’t perceive themselves as pursuing maximal outcomes at all. They perceive themselves as in a defensive mode.

VP: Do you have a sense of how consistent, or inconsistent, the mood of the Iranian public is? Your latest survey was conducted approximately 12 months ago; do you have reasons to believe that, were you to do another one now, the results would be fairly similar, or quite the contrary, completely different?

SK: All publics are pretty stable and so, as a general baseline, as a pollster you don’t expect big change. The most interesting question is what changes might be happening given the new U.S. Administration of President Barack Obama. To the extent that we have data from the Muslim world, but not Iran, I can tell you that people are hopeful, but on a wait-and-see mode. Iranians have an elaborate belief system that says it is impossible for the U.S. to change, that the U.S. is structurally the way it is, driven by lobbies, and particularly the Israeli lobby. There is this narrative that says that Obama couldn’t change these things even if he wanted to. But I still think that, underneath, there is hope nonetheless, and that, if the U.S. does offer an overture, it would be difficult for Iran not to respond in some way.

VP: While surveying people in Iran you were free to touch upon almost every topic, with the exception of the clergy and the role of the Supreme Leader. Do you have a sense of how much the lack of such discussion clouds the overall validity of the survey?

SK: To make things clear, it wasn’t the government that forbade us to ask these questions, they didn’t have any direct involvement; rather the local polling organization we selected did its own self-censorship. And I think that, if we had brought the issue of the role of the clergy up directly in the focus groups, people would have been uncomfortable. I certainly would like to understand this issue better. From what I read, I don’t see a lot of signs that people are burning to actually discuss it though. It’s not that they are fully content. In a sense, this is comparable to asking Americans about the Supreme Court. “Should we get rid of the Supreme Court?” Americans don’t really think about it. They generally like the Supreme Court, they have some respect for it, but it’s mostly just part of the furniture. In Iran, the clergy is not one of those things that people are accustomed to challenging, no more so than the Americans are accustomed to challenging the Constitution. It should be understood that the Council of Guardians can be criticized, for example, for excluding candidates from elections. People do it all the time in Parliament, and there are demonstrations against such decisions. Specific choices can be questioned. But whether the Council of Guardians ought to have any role at all, that’s probably a question beyond what Iranians are willing to discuss. This is, in a way, very similar to asking Americans whether the Supreme Court should have any role. Here, where we have a Constitution and a Supreme Court that interprets it. In Iran the idea that the clergy plays some role in the interpretation of Sharia law and the Koran is not seen as something to question. However people might have criticisms about specific decisions, like people here might have criticisms about specific Supreme Court decisions. To an extent that we have trouble understanding, Iranians don’t perceive Islam, and even the Islamic state they have, as intrinsically opposed to democracy. Again, we have constraints on democracy here as well, it’s not like the majority can make any decision it wants; it is limited by the Constitution and how the Supreme Court interprets it. Iranians would say that this is the same for them, although they would probably acknowledge that their system is more restrictive. But they don’t see it as intrinsically problematic. Words like democracy and human rights are popular words.

VP: What do you think a U.S. Government official should come away from these surveys with? What is most important to understand about the views of the Iranian people?

SK: The combination of openness to the West as well as the rootedness in the idea of an Islamic government. That democracy and an Islamic government are not contradictory. And that Iranians are not in a pre-revolutionary state, but even open to influences from the West. I think it’s very important to get rid of the notion that they are against us; they are simply struggling with the process of modernization, and that is a difficult process. They are people with very proud roots, they achieved very high level of culture, but in the current period they are not doing so well, which is humiliating to them. They are also not ready to abandon their roots. Even as they open up to Western influences. In the end, you have some rejectionists, as you might say, and you have those that are totally ready to go over to the Western model, but the big majority both wants to keep its root and be in a relationship with the West. The problem is that we are not good at talking to that group, we tend to threaten the former and seduce the latter, or treat them as some kind of ally, but we haven’t found a good voice for the middle masses. This approach is rooted in our fantasy that, underneath, everybody is like us and people really want what we have. I think we really must let go of this, while also understand more clearly that Iranians are not in a revolutionary mindset. A lot would follow from this, I think.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – A rapidly shrinking, aging and increasingly expensive American military, which is unequipped to carry out real-life combat missions, is the worrying scenario presented in “America’s Defense Meltdown,” a recently published book that contains the results of a survey of the U.S. armed forces conducted by thirteen Pentagon insiders. Winslow Wheeler, Thomas Christie and Pierre Sprey, three of the authors, discussed the decades-long, and continuing, deterioration of America’s defenses at a book launch organized in Washington D.C. by five not-for-profit organizations active in defense-related issues: The Fund for Constitutional Government, the Center for Defense Information (CDI), the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Institute for Policy Studies.

According to official data from the Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S. military budget

America's Defense Meltdown

(in inflation-adjusted dollars) is higher today than it was during the wars in Korea and Vietnam and during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, which was heavy on defense spending. Today, the U.S. military budget approximates that of the rest of the world, noted Winslow Wheeler, and it is about three times as large as those of China, Russia, Cuba, Iran and North Korea combined – America’s potential short and long-term enemies. However, in terms of the size of forces, numbers are down from the past, even considering Iraq and Afghanistan. This is true for Army divisions, Navy combatant ships, and Air Force tactical wings; despite steady growth, figures suggest, the defense budget is capable of buying only a decreasing number of weapons systems. As a result, the forces are aging. While in the 1980s the average age of an American fighter aircraft was around 10 years, today it is between 15 and 20 years, and growing.

Thomas Christie, who has five decades of experience in defense acquisition, weapon testing and program evaluation, and who retired as the Pentagon’s most senior career civilian official in 2005, depicted a fouled DoD planning and budget process based on a series of flawed assumptions. For example, one assumption has been that future budgets will grow at a faster rate than the past or that weapon system procurement costs will decrease in the future. These constant misinterpretations of budget cycles lead, according to Christie, to the approval of programs that are unattainable in reality, with subsequent delays and ballooning costs. As a result, for example, the Air Force ended up with a dwindling fighter force because it banked on a higher modernization line than what it could have reasonably expected. According to Christie the problem is not in the acquisition process per se, but rather in the way defense managers have been using it. “We have had enough acquisition reform; we need no more acquisition reform. We need to take this process we have and make it work better,” Christie argued.

There could also be historic and philosophical roots to the failures in the DoD acquisition process. According to Pierre M. Sprey, who worked at the Pentagon and is known to have been part of a group that procured some of the most successful weapons in DoD history, the U.S. Air Force in particular still relies on a strategy devised in the early 1900s by an Italian General, Giulio Douhet. The driving idea of Douhet’s military philosophy was that one can win wars without the use of land force just by heavily bombing the enemy’s territory, population and economy. “This is an appallingly stupid idea,” said Sprey. He argued that this conceptualization of war has led the U.S. to develop the wrong military mission – with the attendant dominance of strategic bombing — and, subsequently, the wrong force, comprising ineffective and expensive bombers. In order to improve the state of things, the defense apparatus should review the last seventy years of military history, Sprey recommended, and should distill what really works in combat. DoD managers would discover that, through the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War and the war in Kosovo, what always worked best was a numerous, light and flexible force capable of providing efficient close air support to beleaguered ground troops. Such a force, Sprey argued, would be large, effective and much more affordable than the current shrinking pool of bomber aircrafts.

Not only was their analysis unforgiving but Wheeler, Christie and Sprey’ forecast for the future of the U.S. military was one might say, discouraging. Sprey admitted to be “extremely pessimistic,” while arguing that it is still important to speak out and try to create public outrage over the missed opportunities that the U.S. will incur if the Pentagon keeps going down the current path. “I’m very pessimistic about making the changes needed happen,” Thomas Christie echoed him, “for how concerning it is to see that we have lost most of the capabilities we had even only 20 years ago.” Winslow Wheeler even went so far as to express his disappointment over the early decisions of the Obama Administration as far as DoD appointments. “Obama has promised change, but so far we are getting none of that. They have brought in people from the past and, as a result, we are headed down the wrong path,” Wheeler said. Particular criticism came in for the selection of the newly confirmed Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn, who served as the Under Secretary of Defense/Comptroller in the Clinton Administration, and who was responsible, according to Wheeler, Christie and Sprey, of making the acquisition process even less transparent than it already had been. “I doubt anything can happen until the whole ethos of our military changes,” Thomas Christie concluded emphatically.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Seven years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C. of September 11^th, and the subsequent launch of the United States’ so-called “war on terror,” the international community continues grappling with the Al-Qaeda brand of terrorism. Valentina Pasquali asked Gary LaFree, one of America’s foremost experts, to evaluate the strength of Al-Qaeda today, as President Barack Obama begins reviewing, and reforming, the policies adopted by his predecessor George W. Bush. A professor of criminology and criminal justice, LaFree is the Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a center of excellence of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security based at the University of Maryland.

Valentina Pasquali (VP): In early January, CIA officials announced they had killed two top-level Al-Qaeda officers in Pakistan. This is the latest of several such successes, but what should we make of it exactly? What does it mean for the so-called “war on terror”?

Gary LaFree (GL): It seems to me that the majority of experts and analysts in the field of terrorism studies would agree that the United States has been relatively successful in crippling the leadership of Al Qaeda. The part that we probably have been much less successful with is stopping the social movement that has grown around Al Qaeda. START has conducted several polls of public opinion in the Middle East and we have found a fair amount of support from the general population for either Al Qaeda or ideas associated with it. There is an interesting split here, and researchers and policy-makers must deal with it in assessing the “war on terror.” On the one hand the U.S. has been relatively successful in either imprisoning, killing or isolating the top leadership, on the other hand the Al Qaeda social movement, this sort of Al Qaeda franchise, is very much alive and well. While, from the perspective of a conventional-war situation, removing leadership has always been a critical strategy of war-fighting, this is not as true anymore, considering the sort of conflict that we are fighting against Al Qaeda. Hitting the opponent’s leadership doesn’t have the same meaning when there is a fair amount of support and sympathy for the kind ideas that are being propounded.

VP: These latest killings were widely publicized in U.S. media. Do you think this is meant for domestic purposes, or is it also meant to demoralize Al-Qaeda’s members or potential recruits? How do people in the Middle East react to news that the Al-Qaeda leadership has suffered yet another blow?

GL: This is an interesting question, and probably above my pay grade. My guess is the media is too diverse and independent to be controlled by the political process in this way. I suspect that this hypothesis is much too sophisticated for the relative strength of the political establishment.

As far as the Middle East is concerned, in our polling of the region we haven’t framed the question in exactly this fashion. I would say that, in general, targeted assassinations are a real tricky business and that it’s easy to get a backlash from them. If you look at past studies we have done, especially in the case of the conflict in Northern Ireland, there is some evidence suggesting that the British strategy of relying on targeted assassination backfired, creating an important backlash and strengthening the goals of the Irish Republican Army. I think the same is true in Israel.

Vice-versa, what really has come through from the polls we have done in Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt and Indonesia, is that public opinion reacts very differently when terrorists attack the U.S. military or American civilians. Attacks on the military in Iraq, for example, have a much higher rate of support than attacks on citizens. I think this is interesting, because it shows that the public has not yet really caught on the very blurred relationship between civilians and the military that the U.S. has been creating in Iraq, where many private contractors and non-military personnel do essentially military jobs.

VP: How quickly do you think the Al Qaeda leadership is able to regenerate itself? How successfully can they find new leaders that are as influential and effective as the previous ones?

GL: First of all, let me make clear that we deal entirely with unclassified information. I guess that if you spoke to someone in the CIA you would get a very different picture. In any case, we have noticed that, beginning with 9/11 and then continuing with the attacks in London, Madrid and Mumbai, we are experiencing more of the phenomenon that Mark Sageman called “the bunch of guys.” In other words, there is increased activity on the part of people that have very little or almost no contact with the central Al-Qaeda leadership. They are increasingly like a decentralized franchising operation.

As the U.S. puts increasing pressure on Al-Qaeda central, other outgrowths of the group spring up somewhere else. As a result, the connections between these separate groups are pretty much exclusively media-driven. I think this is one of the most interesting aspects of the world where we live in. This mechanism reminds me of that young boy in Minnesota, who, a few months ago, went into a school and started killing people. He later claimed to be have been inspired by right-wing organizations he read about on the web. He had no contact with these except through the internet. I think this scenario applies to a group like Al-Qaeda, where an increasing number of contacts happen outside of some centralized organization.

This creates real problems for our research. At START, we have been collecting records of terrorist attacks, from Al Qaeda as well as other terrorist groups, and we have now about 80,000 instances categorized, dating back to 1970. It is hard these days to decide how we should record the action of a group calling itself Al Qaeda of Iraq and committing a violent attack in Iraq. Whether it should be considered a case of domestic terrorism or whether everything that is linked to Al Qaeda should go under the label of international terrorism simply because the franchise operates in different countries. It has become a complicated question.

VP: From what you are saying, it appears that there is an increasing problem even just defining international terrorism and Al-Qaeda. Is this the case?

GL: Absolutely. The study of terrorism has always been based on the prototypical IRA or ETA-type of model, characterized by a strong organizational structure. Al-Qaeda’s kind of franchising operation, where a group of people in Europe, without any direct contact with Al-Qaeda’s central leadership, would launch an attack that they claimed was inspired by Al-Qaeda, is a very different model.

The definition of what Al-Qaeda really is and what can be counted as Al-Qaeda’s actions is especially problematic in Iraq. In this country the violence is so widespread that it is very difficult to separate out what might be just military actions, insurgencies, ordinary crime or terrorism.

Additionally, groups like the IRA and the ETA usually claimed responsibility for their acts, which always made it pretty easy to tell when they staged an attack. Al-Qaeda instead rarely does the same. In 55% of those 80,000 attacks listed on our database, a group or another has claimed some responsibility. Instead, if we look only at Iraq, after the U.S. led invasion in 2003, that number was only 9%. In other words, you have a ton of violence but you don’t really know what’s going on for sure.

VP: Compared to 2001, how would you assess today the strength and ability of organize to Al-Qaeda? To what extent do you think the “war on terror” may have crippled it?

GL: One of the ways we have tried to do this is by going through our records, all the way back to the beginnings of Al-Qaeda, and counting the number of fatalities and incidents that we could clearly attribute to Al-Qaeda. The highest number of attacks occurred in 2005; 2007 comes in second. So even if there has been a decline from 2005, it is not at all a huge decline. On the other hand, if you look at deaths and fatalities attributed to Al-Qaeda, 9/11 marked the highest point, because there were so many casualties just that day, since it was such an unusually big attack. The second highest years were 2004 and 2005, with both around 500 victims.

VP: What lessons can we learn from past mistakes and successes? What strategies do you think have worked best and which ones are ineffective?

GL: First and foremost that this is not conventional warfare. If we think we can rely on bombs and fighter planes without paying attention to the impact our actions have on the local population, we are very likely going to lose the conflict. I would say this is something that everybody agrees with at this stage of the game. It is clear that we have to remember that our opponents are providing social services, that they actually have a presence in the communities. Simply going after what the military calls “the bad guys,” has little impact on people living in a remote part of Pakistan or Iraq or Afghanistan: they don’t get any direct benefit out of the bomb going off in a distant location and they remain more concerned about their own safety and the safety of their family. If this battle is lost, then it is likely that the whole war will be lost too.

We also must learn that fighter bombers are not surgical instruments. Although they have become more sophisticated, they still make mistakes all the time, which create a backlash in how the local population looks at the military operation.

In a sense, this exemplifies exactly what is so effective about terrorism. It is a technique that takes the power of the other side and turns it against them. You can win a battle and still lose the campaign, and certainly lose out in world opinion.

Finally, one of the things that occurred to me after five years of running this center is that there is a curious kind of morality involved in terrorism. The public is really turned off when a large powerful army comes in and kills a bunch of people by mistake. They are also turned off, though, when terrorist groups do similar things. Most people are not thrilled to see beheadings on the internet. I think it works in both directions; government miscalculate and so do terrorist groups.

VP: Do you feel that the Al-Qaeda leadership has a sense of this public morality?

GL: They are sophisticated, they are very sophisticated. Yes, I’m absolutely sure they are aware. Blowing up innocent people, in general this sort of extreme violence, doesn’t play that well with public opinion. As I mentioned previously, we have done quite a bit of research on the British and the IRA — they are so well-studied and we thought we could learn a lot from them. The British lost a lot of ground with the population when they came down the hardest, because they were seen as cruel, while the IRA had people willing to take their own life to resist them.

VP: What are the steps ahead? What is your advice to the new Obama Administration?

GL: Above all else, I would say to him that if he wants to be successful, he has to look for international partners. At START, we have just finished a project for which we studied 53 terrorist groups identified by the U.S. Government as the most dangerous threats for the U.S. We found that a striking 97% of their attacks were in fact not carried out against American targets. In other words, countries like Pakistan have a huge interest in controlling terrorist groups that operate on their territories because they are the ones who get hit the worst. The idea that one country can go at it alone without international cooperation is a dangerous one, but I think the Obama Administration has really got that.

The world community as a whole is not happy with random violence and people being tortured and killed, no matter who is behind it. In fact, the U.S. had a tremendous amount of goodwill after 9/11. However, this doesn’t mean that you can be a bully. To the contrary, you have to be very careful how you exercise that kind of power and authority. In the Northern Ireland case, one of the British’s most successful decisions as far as public support was a military surge in 1972: they put many troops in with very little resistance to it, and allowed for very few casualties. The problem with this strategy is that, on the one hand, you must want to follow through and, on the other hand, you also have to be willing to get out as soon as possible. Most countries would not be thrilled with long-term occupations. Moreover, you have to be aware that the moment you start killing a lot of innocent people, the public gets tired of you.

VP: How do you see the future? Is there any reason to be optimistic?

GL: There are a couple of thoughts that can be comforting. Terrorism, while it appears from the outside to be incredibly prevalent, is much less common than people think. Consider all the vulnerable targets that fortunately people do not exploit or hit; an act of terrorism remains a relatively rare event. It is also a very cyclical phenomenon. So much of the terrorism from the 1970s was centered in Europe, and most of that has died out. In the 1980s, terrorism was predominantly Latin American, and most of that has disappeared as well. Now we are in a Jihadi period, but this also won’t go on forever. Terrorism tends to go in waves and fortunately we will get through this period; hopefully soon rather than later.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

On December 10th 2008, the United States Congress passed a legislation establishing that governments involved in the use of children as soldiers may no longer be eligible for major U.S. military assistance programs. The legislation was passed unanimously by both the Senate and the House as part of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Sponsored by Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sam Brownback (R-KS), the legislation restricts the provision of International Military Education and Training (IMET), Foreign Military Financing, Excess Defense Articles, Foreign Military Sales, and Direct Commercial Sales to governments using child soldiers directly in their own armed forces or that support paramilitaries or militias that do so. Center for Defense Information’s Rachel Stohl, an expert on small arms proliferation and children in armed conflict,, is among the people that over a ten year period conducted research and later provided briefings and reports to the U.S. legislators which helped them drafting and passing the bill. The Center for Defense Information (CDI) is a division of the World Security Institute. In her interview with Washington Prism, Stohl talks about the legislation, what it means for the United States and for child soldiers around the world, and the steps ahead.

Valentina Pasquali (VP): Can you explain to us some of the core mandates of the legislation passed by Congress last week?

Rachel Stohl (RS): The legislation limits certain categories of military assistance to governments that are either using child soldiers or that are supporting paramilitary or militia groups that employ child soldiers. This means that the legislation applies even when a certain country’s armed forces might not specifically be using child soldiers, but we might have knowledge that a militia group allied with the government does. The underlying principle is that any military assistance that you give to the government would filter to that militia group.

The countries that are on this list now, are the ones that are receiving U.S. military assistance at the moment and are known to employ child soldiers. As of today, the legislation could affect: Afghanistan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda. There are two other countries that use child soldiers in their armed forces; Somalia and Burma. But the U.S. doesn’t provide military assistance to them, at least in the way with which the legislation is concerned.

VP: Does this legislation only affect military assistance? Or is there any other form of economic assistance that is also taken into account?

RS: No, it only concerns military assistance. More specifically, it only comprises five specific categories: IMET, Foreign Military Financing, Excess Defense Articles, Foreign Military Sales, and Direct Commercial Sales. The truth is that there are numerous other military aid programs, which the legislation does not affect. Moreover, the bill allows for a waiver for countries that are working to professionalize their militaries. This means that those that are already trying to stop using child soldiers will not be affected.

This legislation is not designed to be a form of punishment. It is an incentive. So it’s a carrot, not a stick. We are trying to get governments to make sure that they are not employing children in their militaries or supporting groups that are. A military of that sort is not a professional military. And it is certainly not a military that the U.S. would want to work in close contact with. I have talked with many in the U.S. Marines and learned that it is very common for them, particularly in Afghanistan, to have to guard a check point with a Afghan soldier who might be fifteen year-old. Many of our Marines have fifteen-year-old children at home.

VP: What do you think is the most immediate and practical implication of the legislation?

RS: Well, for U.S. taxpayers, this means that their money is not going anymore to governments that support the use of child soldiers. It is important because tax payers want to make sure that their money is used according to the values that we uphold in the U.S. I think this is a huge achievement for the legislation.

VP: Do you believe that the law has enough teeth to have an impact on the foreign governments and militaries as well?

RS: As in all legislations, in this one too there are several loopholes and there still exist many ways in which military assistance can be provided in spite of this law. In that sense, this is a very symbolic victory, rather than a final resolution of the problem. However, it is also another tool that the U.S. Government has when encouraging governments like Uganda or Afghanistan to conduct itself in accordance to U.

S. desires. It definitely isn’t the end of it all. One law by itself will not make these governments completely change behavior. But it gives the U.S. one more tool to encourage them to stop this practice.

VP: While conducting the research that supported legislators in their aim to write and pass the bill, did you work with people and organizations from the countries involved?

RS: It depended on the country. We have done significant amount of work with people in Uganda and many organizations I have worked with in the United States have programs there as well. We spoke to many child soldiers and to people that work to rehabilitate them. Afghanistan is a different story.

Some of these countries don’t have a civil society and as a result, they don’t have NGOs that operate on the ground, or in the case they do, they are not free to come to the U.S.

VP: As far as the hope of stopping the use of child soldiers all together, albeit maybe in a distant future, which countries do you consider as the toughest challenges and which ones seem more prone to implement the reforms needed?

RS: Burma has the most child soldiers than any country in the world. There are over 70,000 in the government army. That is an incredibly difficult challenge. Countries like Uganda where conflicts have been raging for over 20 years have developed a culture of this kind, whether it’s on the side of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) or the local militias. Child soldiers have become part of the conflict now. So the challenge is not just stopping the use of child soldiers. It really becomes a matter of changing the context in which these children are living so that the use of child soldiers no longer is a viable option.

In the end, I believe it will vary on a country-by-country basis. In Colombia, for example, the government itself changed its national policies so as to stop using children under eighteen in its military. Yet at first it still supported the paramilitaries that were doing so. However, in the longer term the Colombian government also interrupted its support for these paramilitaries. This is a good example of how things evolve over a long time, that it is definitely not a short term process.

VP: You worked on providing research material for this legislation for ten years. Having followed it for this long, is there anything you wish for that is missing in the bill?

RS: Yes, definitely, there are many things! There is a national security waiver. And a five year waiver that applies to those countries that pledge to professionalize their militaries. The problem with this is, of course, that in the legislation there is no metric to determine whether this ongoing professionalization is actually taking place or if it is only an empty claim. With the latest additions to the bill, it appears now that the U.S. Secretary of State has the authority to determine which countries go on the list of those ineligible to receive military assistance. But we are still unsure about exactly how the process works. It would also be nice if the law applied to some more categories than just those five. Those are indeed the five biggest. But there is a trend now in U.S. military assistance not to provide assistance through those traditional accounts and instead to open new accounts that are not bound by those restrictions.

VP: Where do you go from here; are you going to keep working on this same project or do you consider it over with the passing of the legislation?

RS: No, the program is not over. There are a few things to be done in the near future. We have to decide what those metrics are. We have a meeting scheduled at the State Department for January to discuss precisely that. Then we need to figure out what process will be used to implement this bill. In the longer term, we are going to have to develop new legislations to close some of these loopholes that were snuck in at the last minute, particularly by the Republicans. Although this was a bipartisan bill, in the final moments when people were trying to compromise and get things done, there were changes made.

In short, I believe this is a huge victory. We are only the second country in the world (the only other one is Belgium) that has a legislation of this kind. But there are still many things to do to improve it.

VP: Personally, when and how did you start working on this issue and what have you learned from this 10-year-long process?

RS: I started working on child soldiers when I first came to CDI in 1998 because there had already been an established child soldiers program here. But I didn’t want to work on it from the perspective of children’s rights, because there are already many people that do this. It is a children rights issue, I don’t mean to suggest that it is not, but there are many organizations working on this side of it. So I simply asked myself; what personal contribution can I make to this field? What expertise can I bring to the table that can help improve the situation for the children? The answer was in the weapons connection. Child soldiers are not caused by small arms proliferation, but certainly arms proliferation contributes to the lethality of child soldiers, because it is very easy for them to become effective killing machines with a gun. This legislation was a long term goal that the campaign established back in 1998.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – Only a few days before stepping down from his position as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations to accommodate President Obama’s appointee Susan Rice, Zalmay Khalilzad drew a few conclusions about his years at the UN, and about his career as a diplomat, at an event organized by the New America Foundation (NAF) in Washington D.C.

Describing his overall experience as a “net positive,” Ambassador Khalilzad argued that the UN is an institution that “can and has been useful,” whenever the United States finds ways to approach it effectively. During his tenure, Khalilzad stood apart from his predecessor John Bolton by being more attentive towards the opinions of other representatives. “The mere factor of engaging and listening moves your interlocutors towards your domain,” the ambassador said during his conversation with Steve Clemons, Director of the American Strategy Program at NAF.

Prior to serving as the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad was the Chief of Mission at the American embassies in Kabul and Baghdad. In Afghanistan, he oversaw the strenuous negotiations that led to the drafting of the country’s constitution, was involved with Afghanistan’s first elections, and helped to organize the first meeting of the Afghan parliament. “We worked very hard during those days, using persuasion and engagement. Sometime we would summon the threat of the use of force, we had to deal with all sorts of people,” Khalilzad recalled. In 2005, the ambassador was transferred from Kabul to Baghdad. Although at that point things in Afghanistan seemed to be turning for the better, Khalilzad remembers that “the Afghan people were quite concerned with the general assumption that Afghanistan had already succeeded.”

Today, crippled by a new spike in violence and an increasingly corrupted central government, Afghanistan seems to have plunged back into its worst days. President Barack Obama’s more immediate plans entail sending more U.S. troops into the country. “I think it is a mistake to think that you can solve this as a military issue,” Ambassador Khalilzad claimed, stressing the need for a more comprehensive approach that focuses increased resources on strengthening governance. According to Khalilzad, the Afghan Government must also improve its below-standard performance. “Success in Afghanistan will not be achieved without the Afghan Government doing its part,” the ambassador argued. Khalilzad praised the idea put forward by the new administration of nominating a czar that would oversee U.S. policies towards Afghanistan and Pakistan as inherently interrelated (former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke was appointed to this job on Thursday). The ambassador also argued for a more active role for the UN in war-torn countries such as Afghanistan. With many players active on the ground, he noted, there is a growing need for coordination. “The right representatives from the UN can certainly do that job,” Khalilzad claimed.

Born in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad was the highest ranking Muslim in the Bush Administration (there are none yet in the cabinet President Obama has assembled.) “I am who I am but I don’t get up every day thinking that I’m a Muslim born in Afghanistan,” the ambassador claimed, denying that he ever felt particular tensions between his professional role as a representative of the U.S. Government and his personal ties to Afghanistan. Nevertheless, he admitted that Afghanistan remains “very close to his heart.” It was no coincidence that Afghanistan was at the heart of the conversation with Steve Clemons.

Beyond issues ravaging his native land, Zalmay Khalilzad also addressed the gravity of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, arguing that it is one of the key factors destabilizing the Middle East. According to Khalilzad, a widespread agreement already exists on the fact that the only solution to the conflict is that of two co-existing states. Only Hamas and Iran continue opposing the plan, Khalilzad said, and refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Israel. Nevertheless, the ambassador doubted that Israel could ever achieve anything with an exclusively military approach: “I don’t know if there is any military solution that is feasible. You can’t just get rid of Hamas,” Khalilzad said. Rather, in the long-term Israel might be better served by a strategy of engagement and by trying to turn Hamas into a more willing interlocutor.

A difficult moment for Zalmay Khalilzad came when he was asked about the decision of the U.S. Government to abstain from voting on the UN Security Council resolution of January 9^th, which called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. The cease-fire and the resolution itself had been negotiated directly by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who spent three full days in the Middle East to personally participate in preparatory talks. Secretary Rice also personally attended the session of the UN Security Council in question and, then surprisingly, abstained from voting on her own resolution. “Our abstention was a matter of the timing of the resolution and not of the content,” Ambassador Khalilzad tried unconvincingly to explain at NAF. “Secretary Rice said clearly that we supported the content of the resolution,” he added.

Khalilzad, who was a fervent supporter of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was also asked by a person in the audience whether he was ready to apologize for a decision that many now consider to have been misguided. The ambassador defended his stance explaining that it had stemmed from a personal assessment of what had gone wrong at the end of the first Gulf War. Then, U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq without toppling Saddam Hussein. This left the Iraqi people dealing simultaneously with a brutal dictator and with a strict regime of international sanctions. Khalilzad believed that something had to be done: “I stand behind what I wrote after the liberation of Kuwait,” declared the ambassador.

“On balance, I’m very satisfied,” Ambassador Khalilzad said in reference to his term at the UN. He admitted, however, to a number of areas where he wishes he had accomplished more but was not able to. Among others, the ambassador listed the crises in Darfur and Zimbabwe and the puzzle that is the regime in Burma. He also admitted to have not completed the kind of reform and streamlining of the UN bureaucracy that he had hoped to achieve while in office.

In the future, Ambassador Khalilzad sees himself doing research at a think tank, writing a book, and possibly participating in a working group that focuses on Afghanistan and its surrounding region.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism – Persian Edition

Denver, CO – “We are not going to go silently into the American dark night,” Ron Kovic screamed from his wheelchair on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol. Mr. Kovic is a Vietnam Veteran and the author and protagonist of the book Born on the 4^th of July, which inspired a homonymous movie starring Tom Cruise. “I’m here to end this war,” he told me afterwards. “I know what war is, I’ve dealt with the effects of war for over forty years, that’s how long I’ve been in this wheelchair.” A scattered crowd of around 700 listened intently. They were members of a variety of activist groups, from environmentalists to women’s advocacy organizations, with the opposition to the war in Iraq as the main unifying theme of the rally.

An organization called Recreate ’68, initiated with the goal of reignite the passions that made the students movement of 1968 famous world-wide, was behind the protest. Mark Cohen, one of the organizers, explained to the crowd the need to recreate ’68; “In 1968 people understood that the choice between a Republican and a Democrat is no choice. The lesser of two evil is still evil,” he told the people assembled at the bottom of the steps of the Capitol. Celeste Kindler works for a marketing firm in Denver. She is here because she thinks this is a very important election. “The choices we have are not very good,” Ms. Kindler told me. “The people really need to come out and take back our government.” According to her, both Obama and McCain are sell-outs. During the primaries she supported Libertarian candidate Ron Paul, a choice indicative of the eclecticism of the political views of the people here.

Only a few feet away, a sign lying on the ground says; Muqtada Al Sadr – Anti-imperialist Solidarity. Jeff Berryhill, a student from Olympia, Washington, is among those who carried it here. They are the Students for a Democratic Society, a distant heir to a group of radical left-wingers that became very popular in the 1960s. “As citizens of a country that’s occupying a foreign land, it’s important to support the global fight for the self-determination of the South,” Jeff explained to me. “Muqtada Al-Sadr is one of the strongest opponent of the US occupation and that’s why we support him.”

Other activists, who belong to the group The World Can’t Wait, wore orange shirts and carried orange banners that say; No Attack on Iran. The group started about two years ago as a response to the ongoing conflict in Iraq, Ashley Parada, a student from Chicago and a member, explained to me. “We now feel that the US is targeting Iran cause it’s one of the biggest powers in the region and we don’t think that is a legitimate reason.” Ms. Parada said she came here to inform the people that bombing Iran is actually an option on the table; “Not many people know that Barack Obama has not excluded this possibility.” She told me she’s planning on voting in November, “but most likely not for Obama, and precisely because of the views he holds in Foreign Policy.”

Beyond those activists that continue to be receptive of the message of Recreate ’68 and choose not to take part in mainstream politics, a surprising number of people gathered at the rally today has all intentions of casting their ballot for Barack Obama. Sandy Szewczyk is a middle-aged woman originally from Ukraine; “I also agree that we should be against the war,” Ms. Szewczyk told me. “But the only way to do something about it is to vote for Obama, because he didn’t want this war in the first place.” Joan Spero is here with the Loretto Community, a group of socially conscious and politically engaged Catholic nuns. “I’m here because I’m opposed to war and violence in all form,” she said. “We should withdraw from Iraq and return that country to the people who own it.” She also will vote for Obama in November. “I think he’s a fresh start, one that we desperately need today.” A few other women belonged to Code Pink, one of the most vocal, at times disruptive, anti-war organizations in America. Edwina Vogan, an employee of the Environment Protection Agency from Phoenix, AZ, is among them and she was very pleased with how the day turned out; “I think is great to give room for people to speak out against the war.” Ms. Vogan is for Barack Obama, “I’ve got great hopes for him,” she told me.

None of the Obama supporters who participated in the rally seemed particularly worried that those activists that will not to vote or will vote for third parties candidates might undermine Obama’s chances to be elected President in November. Almost everybody I talked to said that this was a good way to remind the Democratic Party not to forget about the issues that are dear to its most left-wing members. “The more the people speak up, the more politicians will listen,” Code Pink Edwina Vogan said. “Democracy is not made from the top down, but from the bottom up.” Of all the different views and perspectives that try to own, in one way or another, the Democratic Party, it remains to be seen how many Barack Obama will be able to accommodate in his political platform without disappointing one or the other.

Following several speeches, a crowd that had grown to over a thousand, marched toward the Pepsi Center, where the Democratic National Convention kicks off on Monday. Police in riot gear watched over the demonstrators. The march was mostly peaceful, even when the protesters walked by a group of about 30 counter-demonstrators who were holding signs remembering 9/11 and praising war veterans. One sign said; “Sometimes war is the answer,” another echoed, “War is bad, terrorism is worse.” The only minor incident occurred when a crew from Fox News tried to film the demonstration and a few activists aggressively chased the reporters away. Conservative-leaning Fox News is very ill received by progressive activists.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Dennis Kux is Senior Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. A retired State Department South Asia specialist, who served in Pakistan from 1957 to 1959 and 1969 to 1971 and became the U.S. ambassador to the Ivory Coast from 1986 to 1989, he has written histories of U.S.-India and U.S.-Pakistan relations. The New York Times called his book India and the United States: Estranged Democracies, 1941-1991 “the definitive history of Indo-American relations.” Ambassador Kux spoke with Washington Prism about the current situation in Pakistan, the historical roots of today’s problems and the future of the country.

Valentina Pasquali (VP): In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, the novelist Salman Rushdie said that the roots of modern Pakistan’s problems can be traced back to partition. Rushdie says, “What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You’re all Muslim, so now you’re a country. As we saw in 1971 with the Bangladesh secession, the answer to that was: Oh no, we’re not… It’s much more important for Punjabis to be Punjabi and Sindhis to be Sindhi . . . Religion doesn’t offer enough of a common basis.” Do you agree with this assessment? Are ethnic and religious identities the most important hindrances to Pakistan’s development?

Dennis Kux (DK): I think that this is overstated. It is true that there are strong regional feelings but I don’t think the place is going to come apart. Moreover, the one virtue of the current national government is that all the regions are included, so that nobody can say they were left out.

Pakistan’s main problem has been its lack of self-identity, of a positive self-identity. Pakistan has always acted on the basis of a negative identity, on the premise that A) it is not India and B) it is terribly threatened by India. In short, the rivalry with India is still a major driver. It has been the rationale for heavy military spending, which has diverted important resources from basic infrastructure.

This has allowed the military to run foreign policy, and also to some extent interfere in domestic policy. Since the late 1970s the army has seen itself as not only the protector of Pakistan, but also as the protector of a Pakistani ideal, which they have defined as an Islamic state – not necessarily a Taliban state but one with a heavy dose of Islam. Basically, one can say that this approach, and the effort in using different terrorist groups as proxies in the struggle with India and for Afghanistan, has backfired. Pakistan has raised hell in Kashmir, but it hasn’t moved things toward a settlement. And in Afghanistan getting the Taliban in was hardly a positive achievement. But Pakistan thinks that the US is not going to stay in Afghanistan and fears that if the US leaves the place will fall apart again and the Iranians will come in with their friends, the Russians with their friends and above all the Indians. So they want to have their friends there, the Taliban.

Nonetheless, one can argue that supporting the Taliban now, which certainly some elements of the military are doing, is undercutting what you think Pakistan would aim at, trying to find a modus vivendi with India and having better relations with Afghanistan.

VP: Given this history of Pakistan’s spasms of democracy, and the military’s periodic intervention, how do you assess Pakistan’s national elections that took place in January? How solid do you think the new coalition government is?

DK: The elections provided a new opportunity for Pakistan. The people rejected President Musharraf and picked two parties, Benazir Bhutto’s People’s Party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), which are secular, middle-of-the-road, slightly left of center.

The PPP and the PML-N said they were going to get together, and they did, forming a grand coalition. They also brought in the local party who won the elections in the Northwestern frontier provinces, which is a secular party that beat the religious leaders. And they are trying to bring in the secular party from Karachi.

They agreed on two main points: they would be for a more democratic government and that they would reinstate the judges that Musharraf had fired. But they disagreed on how to do that. I think part of the disagreement is that Sharif, who was in jail for treason and was thrown out of the country by Musharraf, has an issue with the President and just wants him out. Zardari, on the other hand, is someone who may suffer personally if some of Musharraf’s decisions are rolled back, because he was given an amnesty and there are questions on whether the amnesty was legal.

Nawaz Sharif’s ministers recently pulled out of the cabinet, but his party remains part of the coalition for now. It is important to note that the PML-N has formed the government in the Punjab, the largest province. Punjab is very important — it has 60% of the population and even more of the economy. If Nawaz Sharif was to pull out of the central government, it would make the situation very complicated with two different parties ruling Lahore and Islamabad. It’s a recipe for troubles.

There is also the added complication that the lawyers, who sparked the difficulties for Musharraf last year when they protested the firing of the Chief Justice, are now protesting again because the judges haven’t been reinstated. They have the support of Nawaz, but only partial support from the PPP.

The role of the army also remains unclear. Musharraf, to some extent, is on his own, the army did pull back at the time of the elections, which is why we had free elections. But it’s not clear exactly what they are going to do, they are feeling that their image is tarnished by the Musharraf years and they feel this was good time to pull back and let other people hold the bag. Especially since the economy, which was supposedly in good shape, has gone very bad: inflation is way up, there are power shortages, and food prices have increased significantly.

In general the situation is fairly unstable, which is too bad because what Pakistan needed was stability, political stability.

VP: Do you see this current government as a potentially trustworthy partner for the US?

DK: We don’t know if Pakistan is a trustworthy partner. It is especially unclear when it comes to terrorism and civilians-dictated policies to fight it. If you look at the ongoing negotiations with the Taliban, you’ll notice that different people say different things and it is hard to predict where these are headed.

The US certainly doesn’t like that Pakistanis say, “This is a political question and we can work something out that will take care of the problem of people crossing over the border.” The fear here is that they will make a deal which will provide peace in Pakistan but then leave it open for the Taliban and Al Qaeda to continue attacking Afghanistan from the sanctuaries in Pakistan. That’s a big worry here in the United States.

Now, the difficulty is to getting Pakistanis to do what you want them to do and the dilemma is; “How do you apply pressure, should you apply pressure?”

VP: How do you evaluate President Musharraf’s position today? How much longer do you think he will remain a key political figure in Pakistan? What is his relationship to the United States?

DK: President Bush called Musharraf last week. We’ve been criticized for supporting Musharraf too much, but I think now it comes down to Bush’s loyalty to his friend.

Musharraf’s position is much weaker. He doesn’t command all the levers of power anymore, the situation is more fractured.

It all depends on what sort of an agreement the coalition parties reach, if any. If they don’t, he may well stay on, just because he is there. Nawaz Sharif talks about impeaching him, but that is possible although the military might not want to see their former chief put through that process, it reflects badly on the army as well.

Basically Musharraf is one of the three big players. You have Zardari, you have Sharif and you have Musharraf. One of them is going to go. It is not entirely clear who it will be. It is not going to be Zardari. More likely we will see Musharraf ease out or retire, (there were rumors last week that he was thinking of retiring), or we will see Sharif quitting the government. If this is the case, then the PPP will have to try forming a coalition with the former Musharraf group, which will make for a strange affair.

VP: Would it be accurate to say that for the stability of Pakistan the best solution would be that Musharraf voluntarily retires?

DK: It would be good for the country if the government stays together and tries to work through this next term. No political government has last through a whole term, ever.

VP: In recent years, the Bush Administration has chosen Musharraf as its direct interlocutor in Pakistan. How do you judge such policy? And considering the new government and Musharraf’s increasing difficulties, what do you think the new Administration should do?

DK: There has been the feeling that the Bush Administration has put a lot of his currency on Musharraf. Part of the reason was that they liked him, but they also feared that, a fear that Musharraf himself promoted, if he went out the religious parties would be the big gainer. The good news out of the recent elections is that the religious party did very badly, much worse than what they did in 2002. They won 60 seats in parliament then, and this year they only won 5. They went from 11% to 2.2% of the vote. This showed that the public in Pakistan is not pro-Islamist at all. However, the Islamist parties are still able to make a lot of noise, and they are all in part affiliated with the various terrorist groups.

Today, of the two predominant personalities, Zardari is seen as the more accommodating to the United States, in part because the US helped arrange an agreement between President Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto when she came back and was granted amnesty. But Nawaz Sharif was not part of it and he was, wrongly I think, seen as being anti-American. He is perhaps more nationalist than Zardari, but really he is more of a smart politician than anything else.

In any case, both of the parties have been pushing for talks with the militants claiming this to be the best way to try to solve these problems. The US doesn’t see it in the same light. Our concern is that in the negotiations, as in the deal that Musharraf worked out two years back, the government simply agrees to pull out and let the militants and the terrorists do whatever they want as long as they leave the Pakistanis alone. The US is concerned about an agreement which does not end the use of Pakistan as a safe-haven. The government spokesman just said that they will take care of that but so far it hasn’t happened.

In Pakistan we are faced with a real problem. The US is dependent on the Pakistanis, and they partly help, but they are also a part of the problem at the same time. The question is,
“how do you balance this off, with your aid? Should you be more discriminating, should you put more conditions on the aid?” I think what we should be trying to do is to strengthen the institutions, but you can’t do it until they settle down and stop fighting.

VP: The International Herald Tribune recently wrote, “The car bomb that went off Monday at the Danish Embassy in Islamabad was only the latest of several recent signs pointing to Pakistan as a nexus for terrorism and religious extremism.” What shall the US and the international community make of such nexus? How dangerous is Pakistan with regard to international terrorism?

DK: It is a complex situation. One can say that Musharraf either played a double game or he wasn’t able to deliver on at least part of his agreement with the US and, although he provided help and did a lot of things against Al Qaeda, he didn’t do much against the Taliban. And he allowed them to reestablish themselves.

This is partially due to the fact that the military has used these terrorist groups as proxies for Pakistan over the years, not unlike what the US did in the 1980s with the Mujaheddin. Today’s militants belong to the same groups, in various and different forms, that were used against India in Kashmir. Then there is the Taliban, which although not a creature of Pakistan was greatly supported by Pakistan.

Musharraf had a lot of strong words but the actions haven’t been as strong and now we see the consequences. By not acting more firmly earlier and then by acting unwisely a couple of years ago when he sent a lot of soldiers into the tribal areas where they hadn’t been before, and did very badly, we have a situation now which is very troubling, and an area that provides a sanctuary for all sort of terrorists.

Now, the new government claims that it wants to change its approach, but their first move is to try to negotiate. The US keeps repeating that the negotiations have failed. There is significant lack of communication and of agreement between us and the Pakistanis.

VP: Speaking of security-related issues; how do you view the situation in the tribal areas? How should we understand the relations between terrorist organizations and their militants and tribal leaders who simply do not abide by constitutional rule? Are those inherently connected, or are they two separate problems facing the Pakistani government?

DK: I think the situation varies from place to place. The tribal areas, both culturally and legally, are in fact not fully part of Pakistan. The laws that apply elsewhere don’t apply there, so they are used to this independent existence. People see them simply as they are — an autonomous part of Pakistan. They have a long history of fighting against outside authority. Many live off smuggling. The region is perceived as backward and the economic situation there is much worse than the rest of Pakistan.

As far as their links with terrorism, I think it is all one big challenge. And I also don’t think there is much difference among the different groups and organizations in the various parts of the country. They are different but they work together. It is hard to differentiate between the Pakistan Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, Al Qaeda, other groups working from Uzbekistan.

VP: Much of the international debate on Pakistan revolves around security issues. However, the country has been struggling with rising food prices, energy shortages, and an economy that for the first time in years is expected to grow less than 6%. How serious do you think these issues are? Is the new government addressing them effectively?

DK: The economic difficulties are very important. We see, right now, 12-13% inflation. The present government will start to be blamed for this if they don’t do a better job. To some extent they are prisoners of what happened in the rest of the world. But they are, in a way, the victims of the failure of the past military government. This did a good job at a macro level, but they didn’t take advantage of it to tackle some of the underlying problems — education, health, infrastructure, etc.

Moreover, they continue to have only limited trade with India, which means they have lost the opportunity to gain access to the Indian market, which would be good because the Pakistanis have a comparative advantage in certain areas.

The civilian government should really be focusing on this rather than to keep fighting among themselves. Recently they put out a budget, but it wasn’t very realistic. On paper it balances everything but it’s hard to say whether it will prove effective. It withdrew a lot of subsidies, it supposedly raised taxes, increased the tax base, but it’s not clear what kind of effect it will have. The trouble is that they say they are going to implement the reforms, they pass laws, and then nothing happens.

VP: In the same interview mentioned above, Salman Rushdie speaks about his 1983 novel Shame, which he wrote about Pakistan, and says that it is even more relevant today; “Corruption, power, generals, the whole thing. Pakistan is not different, it’s just worse.” Do you agree? In conclusion, are there reasons to be optimistic and what instead are the biggest hurdles ahead for Pakistan?

DK: “Pakistan is not different, it’s just worse,” I would agree with that.

The thing that is clearly worse is this threat of terrorism. In 1983 we didn’t have entrenched terrorist groups that were ruling parts of the country and now we do have that. They are trying to assert themselves, mainly in the Pashtu areas. That’s certainly an important threat and something that we didn’t have in 1983.

We also have insurgencies in Baluchistan. They have existed for a while and they rarely have accommodated well within the national government. Recently the biggest grievance is about the big blue-water port that is being built in the city of Gwadar. The Baluchis say that they are not going to get any benefit out of it. Moreover, the military was very heavy handed in dealing with the tribes, which helped cause uprisings in Baluchistan. However, it was a political insurgency and not a movement to try to separate from the state or to impose Sharia law; they were looking for more autonomy.

I guess one has to be pessimistic. Pakistan just has continuing problems. I don’t think the state will collapse but I don’t see the civilian government doing what they really need to do. In the end, we will have to see how they come out on the courts issue. This is a fairly important problem, how they deal with the Constitution, with issues that are still on the table and haven’t been resolved. They agreed together that they would solve the court problem but they have missed the deadline.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – On January 14 Taliban militants attacked the Serena Hotel in Kabul, considered one of the rare safe heavens for foreigners and wealthy Afghani. The incident was the most recent reminder that security conditions in the country remain unstable. In an effort to invite continued support from the United States and the international community to the reconstruction of Afghanistan, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullah Abdullah visited Washington D.C. last week, speaking publicly at research centers and non-governmental organizations with the purpose of outlining his view on both the achievements and the failures of the years that have followed the Bonn Agreements of December 2001.

On Friday Dr. Abdullah, who now heads the Massoud Foundation in Kabul after having been ousted from the government in 2006, spoke at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and at an event co-sponsored by the Academy of American Diplomacy and the World Affairs Council. His first visit in two years, Dr. Abdullah opened his talk at Carnegie with the acknowledgment that “while things don’t seem to have changed that much in Washington since I last came, a lot has changed in Afghanistan.”

Unfortunately not all has changed for the best. An “opportunity came in the midst of tragedy,” he noted, when because of the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 the attention of the world turned to Afghanistan and the country was given a chance to emerge from decades of war. Despite the improvements, according to Dr. Abdullah, Afghanistan is not where it should be today.

The absence of security throughout the country remains a long-standing impediment to efficient governance and faster capacity building in Afghanistan. His Honorable Ronald Newman – recently returned from a two-years mission as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and moderator at the conference hosted by the World Affairs Council – expressed pessimism; “security is going from bad to worse,” he said. As a response, Dr. Abdullah pointed to a few positive signals, such as the fact that in the last months the Taliban lost control of two of their major bases and of some of their most influential commanders. He also highlighted improvements in the performance of the National Army. However, the former Foreign Minister admitted, the Taliban have grown much stronger in Pakistan and simultaneously the perception among the people of Afghanistan is that the state of things has worsened.

The Afghan people, Dr. Abdullah remarked, are also very perplexed as to the intentions of the international community. Reportedly, a part of the population is convinced that the U.S. and NATO forces are in Afghanistan to stay and are pursuing the construction of permanent military bases. Others instead fear the opposite extreme, that everyone will suddenly be gone abandoning the Afghani to their own destiny.

Despite the growing concerns, the Afghans clearly reject the agenda of the Taliban, Dr. Abdullah reassured the audience in Washington D.C. “The majority of the people,” he said, “is still endorsing the (democratic) process since they chose it as the only way forward.” However an incapability to work cohesively and cooperatively remains, the former Foreign Minister noted. Dr. Abdullah expressed open dissatisfaction with the current relationship between the government of President Karzai and the Parliament. In his opinion, the people of Afghanistan don’t view this as an effective government that works on behalf of the popular mandate, sentiments that create a dangerous spiral. “If the people don’t feel that there is a legitimate way to deliver services, then they’ll start thinking that the only solution is embracing illegal activities,” Dr. Abdullah repeated throughout the day as he called for the executive to become more aggressive in fighting internal corruption and more punctual at maintaining the promises it makes.

Prompted by questions from the audience, Dr. Abdullah addressed the controversial governmental effort to seek out moderate Taliban in the attempt to integrate them in the legal institutions. He stated; “As far as I’m concerned, there is no such a thing as a moderate Taliban. Their plan is that of overthrowing the government to re-create the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” Nevertheless, the former Foreign Minister added a distinction. Some of the people that might still associate with the Taliban, he clarified, are in it not because of adherence to their ideology but simply for lack of better opportunities. “These are the people that we should reach out to, provided that they accept the constitution of Afghanistan,” he said.

Dr. Abdullah also emphasized repeatedly the challenges that are inherent in the delicate neighborhood that Afghanistan must confront, a region ridded by continued tensions. On one hand almost all bordering countries have been involved in the reconstruction process in Afghanistan and have allocated to it significant funds, he acknowledged. On the other, contentions remain with each one of them.

Recent reports signal that Iran might be arming Taliban militants. At the same time Afghani refugees are pressing against the border and pouring into Iran putting pressure on the government in Teheran. India has already contributed $700 million (US) to post-war Afghanistan and relationships are solid, Dr. Abdullah said. However bilateral dealings with India always seem to be entangled with those with Pakistan and with the tensions that exist between them. The interaction with Pakistan has, on its part, significantly improved, the former Afghani Foreign Minister claimed pointing to data on trade and investments. However, the Taliban have been able to regroup in the tribal areas to the border after being eradicated from Afghanistan and from there have been launching attacks and re-entered the country through the porous border.

Dr. Abdullah concluded noting that for a long time there had been very little hope that Afghanistan could be restored as a country and given a chance to live at peace with itself. “Your help and that of the international community,” he told the audience in Washington, “made it possible to realize that dream.” Then, he called for a thorough review of the state of things, pointing to the need for the Afghan people and the international community to come together and agree on a common assessment of what the developments have been and of what path should be taken next.

Dr. Abdullah’s vision for the future stems from Afghanistan’s apparently disadvantaged location as a land-locked country. “We need to take advantage of our geography and transform Afghanistan into a land bridge between South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East,” he said on Friday, “in this way the neighborhood will see a stake in the stabilization of the country,” inviting everyone to focus on the construction of roads as the first priority of the reconstruction process.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism