or Afghanistan this is a change in the way we provide support to Afghanistan and I think what we'll try in this panel is a sense of you did that happen how did it happen and was it successful an important point I think to mention is that during that period the man who is now President of Afghanistan was appointed by President Karzai to be the czar to drive that transition process so I'm very happy to have Heela here who will be our first panelist who was an advisor and is now the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Afghan Embassy and this is the moment in which we really want to begin to hear what were the Afghan voices, what were their views how did they feel that they were being consulted and and involved I think this is also a phase at which we should have begun already to internalize the lessons that we had learned from the you know up to then for the first sort of nine years of our involvement and hopefully one of the issues that will come out in our various in the discussion of the panelists will be a sense of had we begun even if it was not in the sort of systematic way that we're trying to do now had we begun to internalize lessons that we had learned through that early part of the intervention I think I will basically begin with that brief introduction the rules as usual are 8 to 10 minutes and as usual I'm sure the rules will be broken but I will make a valiant attempt to hoist the red card if it becomes too egregious but with that Hilo let's start with you Thank you very much Scott for the introduction I'm very glad to be able to be here with you today to join you in these discussions I think this event that you've organized for today comes indeed very timely not only because just last week our President President Rani together with his highly-level delegation has just visited Germany there were a number of future development corporation agreements that were made the partnership was renewed and Chancellor Merkel has very graciously committed or the German government has committed itself to even increase its troop presence in Afghanistan by 15% this comes very shortly after the Afghan government was able to highly welcome the announcement by President Obama that was made to delay the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in order to consolidate the very important gains that we had made together but also to stand by our side at times where we do need this further support to train and assist our forces besides the very practical needs of this renewed partnership and this prolonged support or further support of our allies and friends I think what has to be acknowledged is also a very highly symbolic value of such an announcement looking at cooperation during that long process to draw review that was undertaken between the Afghan government and the U.S. but also of course with the other big partners I think Germany has been very clearly been a major support in this I think the German administration and the defense officials had voiced very clearly and also publicly that they would support further engagement and they would advocate for probably a bit more patience along the way in order to stand by our side and I think this is very much of course seen and acknowledged by the Afghan administration and I think President Mani also liked to point out in the past while it was probably more the U.S. at the beginning of this engagement that probably had to convince its big partners to engage in Afghanistan I don't know if it was necessarily the complete other way around but it was certainly that Germany had a big role in this and had been very clear along the way I think from the Afghan perspective the new government under President Mani and Dr. Abdullah have very clearly shown their willingness and readiness for complete Afghan takeover of responsibilities at the same time they ever since taking office had always voiced the big concerns that we've been having the fact that a particularly difficult year would lie ahead of us this last year by now 2015 but possibly also the coming year and that there is further requirement for support and partnership again we are very appreciative of those recent announcements from partners and this further engagement at the same time we still need a further support what is already proving to become a risk for our forces as the lack of close air support however before those or again before those announcements by our partners were made I think there was a very wide sense of uncertainty in Afghanistan not necessarily so much in the administration of course they were very closely involved in the review and they know what was to be expected I think more in the Afghan wider public so are we going to be alone completely rather soon and rather abrupt or will we have our partners standing with us and I think what might come might be surprising for a few people is the fact that the wider Afghan public does very much recognize and is very much aware that this is a long, long engagement and this is a country that is far away from the US and it's far away also from Europe and that there is massive sacrifices that were made and I think that's something that really has to be has to be pointed out often that it's there's a wide sense, the general Afghan public does welcome this very much you very often have the voices that might speak otherwise and might speak louder or actually get that platform the standard Afghan person might not be heard I think what also gets lost in belated conversations often particularly in the mainstream media which I think power is not to be underestimated is the fact that our forces have made remarkable progress despite despite it all against all odds and also despite the fact that the enemy has surely gained strength in the country and has scaled up the attacks against Afghanistan and also despite the fact that there are new emerging threats that make that all much more difficult and particularly an increased activity of daish in Afghanistan recently ultimately however Afghanistan does not want to have to defend itself forever and cannot it we a security system and forces are essential of course for us however a sustainable process can only be one of dialogue and cooperation and peace of course here I think Afghanistan very much relies on its biggest friends and partners to support it in that peace process there have been setbacks there we remain hopeful however and again are I think very clearly relying on that whatever is in the power of the allies to help us in this and put pressure where pressure belongs I think everybody who's been involved in the Afghan cause by now knows that our official stand point is that peace can only be state to state that has to be peace being made between Afghanistan and our eastern neighbour Pakistan talks with the insurgency can be sustainable only if we have peace with Pakistan just yesterday at the heart of Asia conference President Lani his delegation met with Prime Minister Sharif and other relevant officials what we're hearing so far is positive it's promising we don't give up anyways on peace but yeah we'll go on with this because that's what is the main goal of this administration also to achieve peace in order to do everything else that we actually have to do which is always things get delayed things don't work in the pace also it could have and it should have I'm actually now then also going to the economy of course very closely interlinked with security and stability Afghanistan's economy has been and is still gravely challenged I think that 13 years of reconstruction and development efforts might not have had the impact or the outcome that was expected furthermore also the withdrawal of that many troops has resulted also in the loss of 100,000 jobs for Afghans it has at the same time also removed the purchasing power of 100,000 contractors and other personnel Afghanistan still does import food worth four billion US dollars a year even though we are a completely agriculture based economy we are still one of the poorest countries in the world I was also President Rani recently a description saying that if you would change the poverty line to 2 dollars then you would have 70% of our population living below it there was a World Bank poverty analysis very recently again that very much confirmed this all these years of efforts have unfortunately not really led to the betterment of livelihoods of the poor what has changed though is that the gap between the poor and the rich has increased I think much went wrong I think there were shortcomings on many many sides maybe also okay maybe if I can put away my diplomatic habit and put on my more development practitioner head on for a few minutes I think the previous administration did not observe this massive aid flowing into the country any well I think there was very clearly a mid and long term and short term strategy towards self alliance for Afghans lacking I think that this massive aid flowing into the country was also that was had to be observed by an institution that was between weak and non existent at that time unfortunately also led to massive corruption also massive off budget planning did not help the national budget to become what it has to become it has to become the national instrument for policy making and policy implementation in order to be sustainable in order to work for itself also then my lack of coordination but then comes back also to the weak institutions of course between government entities internally but also with the donors did not necessarily help did not necessarily improve the efficiency also of things of course very important the criminal economy the drug trade trade particularly has had a when it still has a major destructive impact on our illicit economy I think I'm saying this because it is very important to appreciate all of this in order to move forward better in the future and the very last to say that we all know that they have major major progress and achievements made in key sectors together with our partners and also because there was so much support and there was such a big focus that we do still require I think it is very much a matter of how we plan and also again looking at our own side how the government gives that vision to the international partners in order to align their support to us which is so appreciated and needed but in order to know also in what direction that has to go in the end we'll be on our own feet and we'll have to know how we want to get there also with the support I think that the administration under President Rani and Dr. Abdullah are no denial of those shortcomings and they have embarked on a very courageous and enthusiastic reform plan probably don't want to go into too much details also at that point but just to a few examples we are going after corruption on a large scale now if it is the government reviewing the massive contracts that have this potential for embezzlement of large funds this has been and this will be a priority of the government so President Rani and Dr. Abdullah are themselves every week sharing the National Procurement Commission they have already again also I think one has to appreciate against all odds and despite the challenges that we are facing every single day have saved hundreds of millions of dollars through this this will have an impact it already has we are very proud to say that we for the first time are meeting our revenue targets mostly through an increased customs collection a better customs collection what the government is doing also for the economic development a bit more on the wider scale I think binding particularly large procurements public procurements to national producers instead of getting that imported this particularly in this very large security sector including also if it is food for the hundreds of thousands of police and soldiers every single day I think this is something that as one of the many examples I think this is incredibly important to look at because it might not have and it was probably not have the immediate impact or will not be shown and felt by the economy immediately it will certainly not be felt by the actual people of this country immediately unfortunately it will take some time but I think it is I think it will be felt widely and it will be important I wish that would have been done in the very beginning I think as well the national unity government also again despite the security challenges has invested a very large amount of its time on improving regional cooperation with all of its neighbors and which has led to a number of really key trade regional trade agreements including the very important transit agreements we are aiming at becoming self aligned on food within the next five years as I said before I think it is horrific the numbers of import that we have even though we should be able to feed ourselves so this is going to be key to look at real agricultural looking at Bill Burd is here as well real agricultural planning this was not a focus of the past unfortunately so water management will be key I think 20 something dams are going into construction now and one has to consider appreciate the fact that 70% of our people live on agriculture and if we succeed and we will succeed in the development sector we can literally create millions of jobs besides becoming self sufficient of food I think overall to conclude on a positive note hopefully I think the Afghan mentality is one of optimism and resilience if you can generalize this however I think many developments of the recent past also indicate this would probably prove me wrong terribly if it is an opinion poll by the Asia foundation or if it is more tangible and more hurtful at the fact that Afghans currently make up the second largest group of refugees entering Europe I think there is still obviously a very long way to go I think it is important to be clear on what went wrong and what can do better I think we will have to be very practical in that process as well but we will I think we are getting to protect our people better and to offer this brighter future for all citizens I am very confident that the path now is on the right path together with that support that we can still have and we still very much enjoy and appreciate and I think that ultimately this optimism will prevail I think thank you thanks for taking off your diplomatic hat and thanks also for I forgot to put it on you for ending on a note of optimism our next panelist will be Dr. Stefan Oswald who is head of division for Afghanistan ministry of economic cooperation in Berlin and will give us the German perspective on cooperation but I want to take advantage of your topic to just recount a brief anecdote when I was working for Yunama in Kabul the minister from a prominent European donor country came to visit the special representative of the Secretary General and this relates to the discussion that the previous panel had brought up about this coordination role and it should have done it, it couldn't do it and that was exactly the topic of the conversation the SRSG was talking about the challenges of this and above all the coordination needed to begin with information sharing we had to know who was doing what of course agreement by the minister, I fully agree this is extremely important you need to play this role half hour conversation where everybody was agreeing and at the end the SRSG said anyway what brings you to Kabul is your bilateral assistance program with the Afghan government I won't say which country it was so with that introduction Dr. Oswald Well, Scott Smith, thank you very much let's say coordination is well a challenge and it is of course not a challenge only in Afghanistan only in civil cooperation of course working together is let's say one of the well the things which brought the human race to succeed on earth on the other hand it is also the biggest challenge there of course several reasons it is difficult to work together and on the other hand of course there are certain agendas which also limit the scope of cooperation that's basically my experience out of 30, more than 30 years in development cooperation while coming to Afghanistan I can only agree to what Mr. Jalal said with regard to the years 2002 and 2006 the wind of opportunity where one could have worked in the comparatively safe environment with regard to state building and also upgrading infrastructure was not taken up properly I can also accept the blame made by my friend Mr. Akaman in the previous panel at the time we had a minister in my ministry who had a bit of a problem interacting with the army and she was also not giving a high level of priority with regard to cooperation so we had around let's say a scope of 30, 40 million euros per year currently we have 250 million so we addressed it quite considerably and I think let's say as we didn't use the chance of the years 2002, 2006 properly jointly let's say we saw the emergence of a re-strengthened AOG especially in the years 2006 onwards and that brought the international community and also Germany to the conclusion while we have to do more militarily and we have to do more in civil cooperation so in the context of the London and Bonn conferences the German government not only increased its military cooperation but we also increased our civil cooperation BMZ to 250 million annually which we are doing still and another 180 million by foreign office which brings the total of 400 to 430 million euros per year which is the single largest budget contribution we give to any country in the world we also saw that by increasing development efforts Germany highlighted the perception that the conflict in Afghanistan was not to be solved by military means only we needed stronger civil in face and then in the years before however looked in retro perspective that should have been started a lot earlier and with more courage to implement conditionality also with regard we had it also in the previous panel with regard to assist the Afghan government to implement much needed reforms the result we see we are currently facing a high level of Afghan population discontent with their own political cast some of which we have contributed to by supporting the wrong people and not even really understanding what we did so we see today some strongmen in power throughout the country that probably should not be where they are and I am not talking about what we strongly support the lack of focus and attention to state building in the early days as well as the attempt to get quick fixes facilitated corruption however it was not the west that caused afghan corruption but we underestimated the significance of good governance and anti-corruption efforts for long term peace and development and the results and still is also a strong need to focus on productive economic structures Hila Alam was elaborating on that we well had a kind of an economy which was basically based on consumption and not on production and well under those circumstances considering the huge amount of funding that was pumped into Afghanistan by all of us afghans wonder why the domestic public income is so low so a focus on locally adapted economic activities agriculture more than anything else Hila Alam was referring to that but also energy and vocational training would have to consolidate the base of economic cooperation Germany together with the previous afghan government was doing a portfolio review in 2012 and basically more or less jointly designed a country strategy for economic cooperation for the years 2014 until 2017 where we are concentrating on sustainable economic development and job creation with water and education with a specific focus on vocational training the lack of private investment also shows that a much stronger focus on the rule of law would have been necessary legal security is still too weak for private investment also important to support government it is very important to support government to stimulate investments by afghans in their own country using funds currently deposited in Dubai or Istanbul banks that's what I receive as a message when I talk to German industry and to German business as long as the afghans are not investing in their own country why should we go there coming back to the original question, Germany realized between 2007 and 2009 that a coherent approach of different policy fields is indispensable for any stabilization effort in a fragile context we significantly improved civil military cooperation and the strategy developed by better understanding the limits and opportunities of each policy field Mr. Ackermann was making reference to that when we did our joint lessons learned exercise we came to the conclusion that we had worked together already in the year 2002 in a way like we are working now this would have not changed Afghanistan drastically but it would have certainly improved a lot in our way of doing business it would have helped if we had that cooperation right from the beginning that's very clear so I deeply hope we will learn from Afghanistan for the next Afghanistan be it Syria or elsewhere any stabilization exercise in a fragile context must have a strong civilian component from the very beginning defining possible solutions and major constraints and state and peace building before military strikes summarizing my remarks we can be proud that Afghanistan has been achieved Afghans as well as the international community and that is unfortunately not reported by the media thoroughly however the biggest challenge also like Hila Alam said is now to sustain and to enhance it what we have so we need really to support the Afghan government creating achievements and to enhance and giving perspective to the people of Afghanistan giving perspectives I see four elements we need to address in future security although the ANSF is doing a good job the capacities are too overstretched we need to address this in order to find a more sustainable solution than the current one to make it very clear more of the same will certainly not serve the purpose it is we don't need to go back to ISAF but a more robust interpretation of resolute could help secondly employment people need jobs to see a future we need to support productive economic activities in order to develop true life perspectives for younger Afghan generation third point trust in government we need to support the government on good governments including anti-corruption efforts and the rule of law and that is going to be one of the key issues on the road to the Brussels conference it is we need to have a renewed contract on those issues reconciliation think we all have to do more including diplomatic efforts in the neighborhood to facilitate a peace and reconciliation process finally the job in Afghanistan is not yet done it is probably not even half done so let us use the coming years effectively and we have to be clear if we are talking about an intervention we need to be clear that we have to have a long steam we are not talking about a decade we are talking at least about three decades thank you very much thank you so our next speaker is Matias Reisenkamp from the Conrad Adenauer Foundation the issues that Dr. Oswald mentioned was a civil-military cooperation I think that is also an issue you will touch on a bit more deeply thank you Scott you may ask the question why somebody like me who is supposed to be much more in a political kind of work will talk about a subject which is basically purely military actually I spent the years from 2007 to 2014 in HQ ISAF and it has what we call the operations archivist which is a kind of equivalent to a US4A historian which we had as well so basically what we were doing or what our task was to write a report or produce a report for every single day in the Afghanistan theater but on HQ level that means on a strategic level not on a tactical level therefore Scott asked me what was the resolution in Afghanistan which has appeared from 2011 to 2014 and the consequences it has produced until today basically I would like to start with a brief summary of the ISAF history and development actually ISAF was created in 2002 according to the Bonn Agreement by a resolution of the United Nations Security Council resolution 1386 and its original task was to enable the Afghan transitional administration under the interim's president Karzai to provide security across the country also to buy them time to create a new Afghan security force later to be known as the ANSF the Afghan National Security Forces and also to to make sure that Afghanistan will never become a safe haven for terrorists again those were the original intentions it was also meant to be to assist the Afghan administration to build up governmental key institutions all over the country but in the first two years ISAF had troop strength of 5,000 troops which is definitely not enough to explain why ISAF didn't get beyond the Kabul boundaries until 2004 in the years to come it was realized that this was definitely not sufficient to keep up the missions and to achieve its goals what was done by then we had a new resolution of the UN Security Council and to expand the ISAF mission throughout whole Afghanistan you can't do that it was 5,000 troops therefore this was done for stages to the north to the south to the east and the west and the number of troops was raised from 5,000 to 32,000 you see this is much more of an international task but the problem was pretty much from the beginning on ISAF was going into areas now where there was very little of governmental control where there hasn't been any ISAF presence before but what there has been is the Taliban presence at least in some regions so consequently ISAF became more and more involved in a combat operational role and here again it was basically three countries sharing the burden of the fight that was basically the United States it was Great Britain and it was Canada also some of the English speaking countries more and more involved in that but the other European nations were a bit how shall I say reluctant to step into the same role in 2007 the first American four star general and this was Daniel McNeill became the first American ISAF this had one reason parallel to ISAF we also had OEF going on in Afghanistan OEF Operation Enduring Freedom which was basically American and also British run at this time that was the global fight against terrorism so basically what we had until General McNeill took command was two different missions ISAF and second which was a purely fighting role OEF so with an American becoming Com ISAF we had a great synergy effect because he was the only one who could run and coordinate both different missions again it soon turned out to be this approach is not sufficient because in many regions of Afghanistan the Taliban were becoming stronger and stronger and when General McNeill was replaced by General David McKeon in 2008 became apparent we need a new approach and a more robust mandate so basically General McKeon asked the US administration to increase the number of troops because 32,000 were not sufficient to be on the fighting mission in Afghanistan so General McKeon and successor was General Stanley McChrystal who took over command in June 2009 and he had a very similar approach so what they did they did re-evaluate the mission and basically they asked for a troop increase commonly known as the search the first step President Obama raised the US troops by another 17,000 and the search was asked for another 40,000 on top of these 17,000 actually what happened the US administration allowed a number of troops of 33,000 they were supposed the biggest part of this troop body was expected to go into a classic counterinsurgency role that means they shall protect the population from Taliban influence but also from Taliban attacks General McChrystal had a strategy paper which was somehow leaked to the media but in this case it had a positive effect because it supported his intention and out of the 40,000 troops he asked for he got 33,000 again the situation has changed in between 5,000 which was an entire US brigade had to go to the north to support the struggling allies over there which at this time was mainly Germany because the insurgency especially in the Conagers area had risen to to a strength that was unknown before so consequently there were 17,000 there were 12,000 US troops missing in the east because we had the 5,000 in the north and 7,000 that were not granted and this did not allow to put up the same pressure on the Taliban in the east as the forces were soon able to put up on them in the south the classic counterinsurgency strategy by General McChrystal also implied that it was not the mission's first aim to kill as many Taliban as possible the main goal was to reintegrate them into society by using certain meanings this could also mean putting hard pressure on the battlefield on them but also providing them incentives of a social economic and financial nature to voluntarily leave the Taliban movement to reintegrate into society this was going under the Afghan national peace and reconciliation program and its original plan was by weakening the Taliban they should be forced to the negotiation table for peace reconciliation with the government and moreover in the areas where ISAF would go into right now for example in the south and governmental institutions should be established because there was in many areas no Afghan government presence at all at this time we talked before about the different summits that were a part of the strategy I will only mention two actually three on December 1st General President Obama gave a speech at West Point where he announced the search but he also announced in the very same speech that he would begin withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan 2011 so basically he announced the search but he also announced the withdrawal plan in the Kabul conference in 2010 President Khazai wanted or you can't say really wanted but he massively supported the idea of Afghanistan Afghan forces taking the lead in responsibility for security in their own country by the end of 2014 which already at this time was considered to be a very ambitious goal we had the Lisbon summit where this goal was confirmed that the Afghan forces should take over full responsibility for security in Afghanistan and this was confirmed later on the Chicago summit in May 2012 on the Chicago summit for the first time the detailed withdrawal plan to start in 2011 was officially declared I know there is a widespread discussion until today in the media if the search was actually success or a total failure and you basically see both of these opinions those supports support the opinion that the search was basically a failure argue on the ground of numbers that were provided actually by ISAF and I may give you some of these numbers just to give you an idea about that arguing on base of the ISAF figures for example they argue in August 2009 there were 2,700 attacks on NATO and coalition forces in August 2012 at the end of the search there were just 3,000 attacks the number of attacks has been rising insurgents attacked 2,000 times in July 2009 another 3,000 times in July 2012 so again we see here arrays about 50% more over they say in July 2009 there have been 475 attacks from homemade bombs and another 625 in 2012 so if you listen to these numbers would you really support this argumentation that the search was deteriorating the security situation of Gunstan so what would you say it's numbers prove to be so relative and everybody is interpreting them in their own favor because if you put into consideration ISAF did go into areas with no governmental presence with no ISAF presence these areas were safe haven for the Taliban especially in the south but also in the east if the search was to be meant a failure then you should also raise the question what would have happened if ISAF did not go in there the Taliban still reorganizing unmatched undisturbed for another 2 or 3 years raising taxes from the population refilling their rents by recruiting installing more and more shadow governors installing more and more Taliban like governmental institutions we can be sure that the Taliban movement would have been much, much stronger in the end of 2000 without the search and the search was actually meant to set up the condition for a successful transition the transition took place in 5 different stages from May, from March 2011 until the end of the ISAF mission on the 28th of December 2014 and basically there's not that much to be said about the transition then it was successful there was no raise no rise or increase in attacks on ISAF troops during the withdrawal and basically that went comparatively comparatively smooth so you can say some people argue that the Taliban wanted to let the ISAF troops leave the country undisturbed undisturbed to make sure they leave but that was not their original plan basically they have been weakened by the search on a very large scale weakened but they were not decisively defeated so you can argue well the outcome of the search is neither a total success but basically it's no total failure either what we have right now is the security situation that from the beginning or basically by the end of 2014 had deteriorated in a way that was unpredicted by any analysts we talked to by any analysts or experts on Afghanistan the ANSF which basically is if you talk to a lot of Afghans is the pride of the Afghan nation the police not so much the army did put up a performance that was to be honest under their conditions they had to fight on absolutely remarkable and even a failure for example like in September in Kunduz is more a mix of failure of governmental agencies like the provincial governor his deputy the Ministry of Defense but of course if you see the Taliban are able to overrun a city everybody blames the military in the first place not going too much into detail our major problem that we still face in Afghanistan is actually the corruption going down weakening the governmental agencies and also weakening the acceptance of the government inside the population and it is also undermining the support of the international donor community to pour in more money into Afghanistan because we cannot see what the effects really are we can see that a lot of progress was achieved especially since 2001 but also if you want so from the beginning of the search in late 2009 but as as General Petraeus put it out at the end of his command said well we have achieved a lot but all progress is fragile and not irreversible and that is basically the way we are looking at it now the actual mission is around 2000 people strong it's just train advise and assist it's not supposed to be in any combat role but it was originally supposed to provide stronger close air support to the Afghan national security forces what happened in the meantime was the global political situation has changed we have any way we have going on the European economic crisis it hasn't disappeared it just has disappeared from the headlines of the newspapers it's not solved yet we also have the conflict in Ukraine going on we have ISIS or how it's called in Afghanistan becoming a major threat in Syria and Iraq and that shifted the focus of military attention more and more to these theaters and Afghanistan shifted more and more away so basically what we have to do what our analysis was is to provide at least the Afghan forces much stronger close air support if possible because that has been the asset that has been identified for example by General Allen but also by General Dunford as critical for their success on the battlefield because at the moment right now they are taking casualties that have been risen that are 70% higher than casualties in the same time and this is something they cannot sustain for long so basically at the moment it's a very critical period also for the Afghan government to provide security to fight corruption but also to maintain the western commitment to Afghanistan so at the moment I would say we are not overly optimistic but there is still some hope left thank you our final panelist is Paul Fischstein who describes himself as an independent consultant but as we heard this morning from John Sobko he was outed he did write a report for us on economic policy which is out there and on the different ideas and ideologies behind the international community and Afghan perceptions of what a different role in the economy should be but this is another brief preface you had mentioned the numerous conferences that had taken place since 2001 I have been at a lot of them at one point it struck me that they all began in the same way which was a minister or a head of state saying now of course this is an Afghan led process but the Afghans must do A, B and C and each of the 41 heads of state had a different A, B and C which would have been very confusing for the Afghans who thought they were in the lead but were given about 120 different instructions at the same time so one of the issues I asked Paul to look at is sort of that coordination but also from the perspective of were Afghan and international elites sort of understanding each other throughout this process but since he's an independent consultant he'll probably say whatever he wants that's what independent means and as always being the last speaker I'm probably going to get red carded sooner than anyone else did I'm going to talk a little bit about the economy focusing on lessons learned from economic issues and Heela has quite nicely unfortunately set the stage by talking about some of the challenges that are facing the economy at this point I think she used the term gravely challenged we all know the numbers on the aggregate economy very robust in excess of 10% growth rates in the aggregate until 2011 and 12 and then decline in the growth rate to 3.7 and 13 and then 1.5% in 2014 which is actually below the growth rate of the population sustainability became very much a buzz word during the run up to the transition but I think it was mostly used not exclusively but mostly used to talk about government finance revenues the financial crisis the ability for the government to pay its bills rather than actually the sustainability of the real economy and create jobs so I'm going to talk about some of those issues but also I want to flag at the beginning you know as we think about lessons learned on the economy as well as really any other sector I think we also have to really think about the environment in which everyone was operating including Afghan actors given the insecure environment given the headwinds where should the economy have been in 2014 at the time of transition I mean everyone agrees it would have been nice to have more robust and continued wide ranging broad based growth but given everything that was going on how realistic was that so in these types of things it's usually standard practice to begin learning the things that I'm not going to talk about and there's a whole set of lessons that are now becoming kind of standard at these types of discussions I just want to hit just go through them really quickly and then I'm going to focus really on two observations one has to do with the transition itself the economic transition and the other has to do with the introduction of the market economy into Afghanistan and that goes to 2001 I think until now earlier today various lessons have been mentioned we've all talked about the pace and the amount of spending the volume of money that was spent as well as the over ambition which itself was in part a function of too much money and I would just I want to give credit to Andrew Wilder for first I think in 2009 surfacing that was the report on the 1950 to 1979 assistance program that was kind of a revelation when it was surfaced we all benefited from it so Andrew you should get credit for that also another thing I think that came out of that research was the notion that aid can be destabilizing a big fundamental tenet of a lot of what we did you know overall in aid but specifically in the economy destabilizing and I think some of the research that was done by Andrew and others at that time really started casting doubt on that or at least raising questions the other observation is and this was mentioned this morning by Dr. Jalali and others that security and other political objectives in many cases in almost all cases tended to trump development initiatives and I think we've all worked in the field, seen where that's operated where developmentally sound initiatives or activities were really overwhelmed by other political or security objectives not that this was necessarily a bad thing but I think we just need to be cognizant that this was happening and I think the final observation I'd make on that is that as we're all in lessons learned mode it was pointed out by a number of people starting with Dr. Jains as well as Inspector General Sopko that there really is a big difference between lessons observed and lessons learned and the question of whether as Dr. Jains mentioned whether we're now entering a new phase of operationalizing these lessons into our management and our decision making and operationalizing I think sounds almost trivial it's not trivial but I think it really in some ways understates the challenge because if we start looking at the political economy of our own institutions some of these changes I think would be extremely profound it would really challenge some of the base and the structure of the way we operate so again lessons learned lessons observed are not necessarily lessons learned so first point about the economy during the transition I think in the run up to the transition the economy was very much the whole economic issue of jobs was very much under identified it was neglected until it was not and I think I think Bill Byrd was one of the people who very early on kind of raised the flag of you know this could become kind of a self perpetuating thing it wasn't so much the spending per se although that was important has been discussed but it was that kind of uncertainty that important word of uncertainty that was introduced into people's calculations and I think what the someone mentioned the announcement of both the surge and the drawdown during the same hour and I think one of the things that does is point out if we're talking about lessons one of the difficulties and one of the challenges of speaking to multiple audiences at the same time I think those of us who live in the US understood the domestic intention of domestic content of that yes we're surging up but you know the end is in sight we're going to be you know drawing down if you talk to people in Kabul very different perspective it's they're out of here and even to the point and this was anecdotal talking to people that said I guess it was that tall building that was constructed near the US or under construction near the US Embassy from which an attack was launched in September I think it was 2011 someone said oh well you know on the day that was under construction and on the day of Obama's announcement you know they just kind of said oh it's over we're not going to finish it highly unlikely but I think it kind of reflected the attitudes and concerns that were going on ISA Afghanistan Investment Support Agency did a study in early 2012 on the like anticipated effects of transition 70 that's 70% of businesses surveyed said it was negative would be negative 25% said there'd be no effect and 5% said that would actually have a positive effect clearly that you know reflects whatever we think of polling data it certainly reflects concern a lot of people at that time were citing the 1990s as kind of the only mental model that people could relate to I heard many times the proverb that once you've been bit by the snake you're afraid of the rope so people didn't know it was actually coming but the only thing that they could recognize was what happened during the 1990s and then of course in 2014 there was the prolonged election process which turned out to be much more contentious than anyone had certainly hoped and I think we're still leaving with living with in terms of uncertainty some of the consequences of that process the second thing and this is kind of something I've been very interested in is the introduction of the market economy into Afghanistan post-2001 and I think from my view this is a good example it raises a number of issues that we in the international community either overlooked didn't understand or ignored and I think it's also a good example of where there weren't necessarily common frames of reference between the international community and certainly some of our Afghan counterparts the market economy was specified in the first strategy document issued by the government in April of 2002 and it was enshrined in article 10 of the constitution in 2004 constitution but I think it's still very much a live issue so much that on the other side of town in the last two days there's a conference by the afghan-american chamber of commerce and the tagline for the conference is transition to a market economy which to me is kind of stunning after four years that this is kind of the headline so we know change takes time but I think it reflects that this is still a live issue I think it's a live issue for a number of reasons one of them is that we in the international community I think underestimated the importance of rule of law and governance I mean economic affairs and we overlooked the politics and the political economy dimensions which resulted in anti-capitalism, state capture one of the examples cited I think it was a 2011 GIZ regional growth diagnostic was the large taxpayer office which was supposed to streamline things but actually it was seen as actually leading to predatory behavior and no one really wanted their company or name on the list because then there would be kind of a bull's eye on your back and you'd be identified I think also to be fair there was a conflation of the outcomes of post-2001 economy and I think Gila mentioned the wealth disparities enormous wealth was created in the last 14 or 15 years and you know obviously that's good but I think the extent to which that went to a certain group of providers or people who captured institutions I think that has been conflated with the whole notion of the market economy and the free market and I can give other examples of that and I think most people feel even people who are very fervent supporters of the market economy that it was largely again coming back to hasty implementation it was very much rolled out quickly there was a rush to privatize some of the state owned enterprises there and so again it was this hasty implementation to try to achieve the notion of free trade my understanding is that Afghanistan is some of the lowest tariffs in the region they very much adopted a free trade regime and my understanding actually that Afghanistan is about to sign WTO agreement in Nairobi and when I was in Kabul in February and talking to people in the various countries we only found one person who was actually in favor of a session to the WTO it's always couched as yes it's a good idea but not right now we don't have a level playing field we have predatory neighbors who are flooding our economy with cheap goods really a lot of this rises to the level of conspiracy theories so it will be interesting to see how that plays out and again lots more I could talk about here but I think it's interesting that the unity government one of its first rhetorical initiatives was on the economy President Rady's trip to China and there was a certain amount of euphoria I think when he came back and there were a lot of expectations about investment and jobs which obviously these things take time so I just want to highlight a couple of things specific cases of maybe where Scott as you mentioned Afghan and international elites maybe weren't on the same page or misunderstood each other one is of course the market economy very different reads on what that was I think and this was mentioned this morning the whole question of NATO caveats about what the military could do was very much misunderstood I think people when you consider some of the security events that took place in Barakhaan and Bal I'm thinking particularly of the April I think it was 2012 at MuNama events the question of where was ISAF and I think most of us can understand at least where these caveats came from but I think the Afghans found those many Afghans found those somewhat bewildering corruption was another area where there's very much a divergence of views I think around 2005 2006 was when corruption really started becoming a live issue and both the Afghan government and the international community was very much banging away on this but really they were talking about very different things and I think the international community was very much talking about corruption in the ministries, rake offs whereas the Afghans were very much highlighting some of the issues around contracting and subcontracting and sub-subcontracting which I think we're seeing as forms of corruption so I think very different models and definitions since I'm over my 10 minutes let me just wrap up by saying two other points and different kind of views one was the whole role of the government and I think this was something very very fundamental and in terms of what the government's role was going to be in life and we saw it in the health sector and we saw it in the economy that the government was going to take on a stewardship role rather than actually leading and being an implementer and I think for a lot of the population this was very much a new idea, a new orientation and they were looking to their government to take the lead in some of these things and I think probably a good job was not done in explaining to people which is probably a multi-generational process what the real legitimate positive role of the government would be related to that the whole question of self-reliance and Healer you mentioned that the dams major dams are maybe now on the agenda because I think if you talk to people over the last 15 years one of their most fundamental questions was why haven't we built one dam and we understand there are riparian issues international issues, legal issues but in terms of self-reliance in electricity versus importing it I think this is an issue that again the international community and many Afghans were on different pages so I'll leave it up there because I'm way over okay to try to more or less keep to the schedule let's have about 15 or 20 minutes of questions the same protocol as before please say who you are and I guess be as brief as possible to allow as many questions as possible I guess we'll start, do we have a okay we'll start with this thing Scott, you okay we got the first four Thanks, Scott Worden from Cigar I have a question I think particularly from Matias there's been a lot of discussion on both panels about the civ mill divide and you seem quite uniquely positioned to talk about it from your dual roles and my question is you mentioned that as ISAF expanded they went into areas where there was governance vacuum this was a mutually recognized challenge both the civilian and military sides it strikes me that particularly during the surge each camp if you will kind of assumed that the other would achieve their mission and they base their plans upon that assumption so the military kind of assumed and trusted that great we'll have civilians in there and they'll do governance and therefore we can kind of fulfill our original mission on the opposite side we assume security is developing officials and therefore we have grand plans that they can't be realized I wonder 20 cents do you think that's true and then more generally how do you really integrate a plan not just in theory but in practice that you adjust over time as those assumptions may become untrue I'm Dr. Kalker I was Deputy Minister during the time of Karzai and then his advisor on health education I'm currently also advisor to President Veni I have a comment and a question on the issue of surge in the troops that occurred that may have had some positive effect of course in and holding the Taliban for a while but our perspective then I think now is that in the long run it held the Taliban the way it held the Taliban I remember in that time the night raids were going on in various villages in Afghanistan and one group of people came from a place called Shindand in Herat and talked to the president when I was president in that meeting they said Mr. President it's okay if the Americans fight the Taliban and they come and fight the Taliban and they come and even kill us but please please stop the Americans looking at our wives that was a big issue because every time the troops went at night and went to people's houses to search people really really reacted badly in our opinion that was the analysis at that time of the cabinet and also Mr. Karzai that that really held the Taliban to recruit more Taliban in their ranks and that kept going on the other effect that had at that time that was the analysis that it lowered it lowered the morale of the Afghan army because they were also reacting to what the people were feeling saying what is going on are we occupied that the American troops are coming to our house looking at our wives by the way the issue of wife and others looking at wife Hila knows better is a big issue in Afghanistan so I think that was one of the thing but one question I have is you mentioned the issue President Obama announcing that he would also withdraw what effect that had on the Taliban we are still considering I would be very interested in your opinion maybe others could also comment on this Henning Leakey German Council on Foreign Relations I would like to ask about the drug production and trade in Afghanistan it's also since we talk about the economy I think it's a very strong economic segment as well of course it is fueling corruption it is fueling it is highly problematic people speak about the drug economy although the share of the drug trade and the over GDP has been going down but still more than 200,000 hectares of opiates they need to be harvested by hand so it's also a job machinery I want to know in the sense of lessons learned when where compromises made or decisions postponed when could one have stopped this development the drug trade to become such an important part of the Afghan economy was that possible and secondly is there a current handling of the drug trade maybe an understanding that it's so important for the economy and for the large number of unskilled jobs that are provided in the southern provinces that there's an understanding that you better let it be for the moment I just wanted to focus on a few issues and raise them as questions on the lessons learned mode because I think that's very good and I'm very happy to see this is not a self congratulatory conference about US and German cooperation but a sober lessons learned effort is any serious lessons learned exercise being done on the PRTs the discussion on civil military was very good it's like a natural experiment because there are many different countries ran PRTs Germany was among the first a country like Germany would be well placed to do this study so it doesn't get overly US dominated but maybe get several people involved I think that lessons learned because one of the most horrifying things I heard was from some US military people that the PRTs worked so well let's institute them in Africa without any real analysis of the whole development, security political economy and governance effects similarly ISA came up and I'm very glad it did I remember being in Kabul when Germany was the instrumental donor in setting up ISA well what are the lessons learned from ISA last year there was a big Afghan private sector meeting where the majority of the participants thought ISA should be abolished so what are the lessons from that I very much agree on the quick fixes in the early years but let's look very recently the NUG itself was a quick fix with the US, UN and I would imagine Germany also very much involved in that delicate bargaining and threatening that resulted in this are there any lessons learned, are there any regrets on the part of the international community warlords entrenched I agree with that point very much I would say is there also entrenched in the NUG itself they're clearly both officially in some cases and also behind the scenes last year just on the financing of the security sector I very much agree on this close air support business if you don't want more Kunduz, if you don't want more the hospital kind of incidents you need better intelligence and you need air support before rather than after a city falls to the Taliban I couldn't agree more with that it has to happen in some way but what are the lessons here on trust funds I've heard vaguely about an ATO trust fund how are you going to get many donors to contribute to the Afghan security sector and make it work and not put too much burden on the Afghans there are some lessons I would argue from the civilian trust fund which in the Afghan context has probably worked reasonably well there are also very negative lessons from the police and ministry of interior can we derive some lessons learned about what went wrong how does it relate to the lead donor system which may have been discussed in the previous section that seems to me and a few people I've talked to have just said that Geneva May 2002 meeting I think was really a mistake to put different donors in charge of different parts of the Afghan security sector Gail Maddox and my questions on the PRT so I'll make it short because Bill did a good job but my impression was the opposite from yours and was very negative so I really do want the panel to address the PRTs in Afghanistan and what how did they collaborate at all my understanding is very little across the coalition between the different countries but correct me if I'm not right and whether or not well just the bottom line on the evaluation of them but in particular the coalition itself and whether you feel there was sufficient across coalition lessons learned within the community thank you why don't I mean there's a lot of issues put on the table especially for you Matt yes why not let's go maybe from Paul backwards address any of the issues that you want to address and sort of consider this as well as a sort of a closing comment and then we should be able to finish more or less around 1.15 and break for lunch the PRTs there's a lot that's been written in some of it but the PRTs have multiple objectives also you know where would it be something that you would see positively or negatively I think you'd have to be very careful about you know the conditions under which you did it because again things got caught up in events and you know people want I think nations wanted to have PRTs to show that they were playing and I'm not sure it was well thought I'd personally be quite skeptical on ISA I mean I think yeah I mean the people seemed to think it was a great idea it started off as a beautiful thing and then unfortunately it spiraled down into something that was less beautiful and I think it just shows the what happens when you have opportunities for seeking of rents and keepers so I think it's something that's kind of you have to keep an eye on in that type of environment people are encouraged to extract rents on drugs very very quickly yes absolutely I think compromises were made I think if we look at some of the historically if we start looking at some of the coin the counterinsurgency activities there was a lot of reluctance to no in let's say in in Nangahar in the east there were a lot of compromises that were made with ANSF where it was again conflicting objectives there's no way that they can move into an area if they're going to be the tip of the spear for eradication or something like that so there are some compromises that were made some of them were sensible I think also in Barakshan up in the northeast probably the PRT there probably chose to look the other way on a lot of the cultivation and the trafficking that was going on potentially too much of a hornet's nest I mean that's my own opinion from talking to people in Barakshan it was just too much to take on well thank you quick run through first to search let's say and the withdrawal only concentrating on the economic effects so I think besides all the other points made I think the search of course created more steam into the economy and on the other hand the withdrawal the quick withdrawal also reduced that steam and I think one of the lessons learned is in this regard we should have aimed for soft landing this regard drugs well I think if we look on the drug issue in Afghanistan we should look on the drug issue elsewhere in the world and the only place where we actually were jointly successful was the golden triangle and the reason was first power monopoly by the state secondly well a judiciary which was only little corrupt and alternatives and that is the point which made me very unpopular in the first place with my minister he asked the same question and I said well all these issues are not in place in Afghanistan so you can't the only thing which is economically an alternative not real alternative but close to a saffron but you can't grow saffron in all the respective places and in this regard I think it is really government control and let's say the rule of law somehow present then you can offer a whole bunch of alternatives and as long as the first two things are not there you don't even need to think about the third PRTs well PRT and PRT is not the same so I can only talk let's say about the experiences we made and of course the PRT experience was part of the German ministry's internal lessons learned thing and we came to the conclusion that in principle the PRT thing is a good thing we should have transferred let's say the from the military to the civil phase earlier to give let's say also to our discussion partners the the governors civilian phase and let's say we should have been better in interacting Mr Ackerman was referring to the role of my ministry in Kunduz at the beginning of the PRT thing in this regard of course we accept the blame and we did better and the last one let's say the Balakshan one somebody of my ministry was the last one who switched the light off he was the last civil representative of the PRT in Balakshan and he was then the deputy in Kunduz so we also were able within my ministry to learn the lesson but if let's say the various actors within the PRT are interacting in a sensible way the PRT is an option also for other places in the world. Aisa I cannot I'm not deferring from you what you said it was as we started the whole thing we had a lot of hopes but I think we underestimated the African context in this regard well also the national unity government you brought up the question let's say looking on the situation we had at that time of course it was let's say I didn't see any alternative to what finally came out of let's say if we were then let's say only supporting President Ghani and not including let's say the second best well this would have probably meant well a division of the country and I think it was not in the interest of the country to have that division trust funds I think ARTF is at least from the civilian side I'm not talking about any security trust fund but ARTF is certainly something Hila Alambo was talking about let's say on budget it is something let's say to have on budget somehow with a safeguard and to say very openly that there is little enthusiasm in the German budgetary committee with regard to the German government providing budgetary assistance to any country of the world and if you have then let's say a bit more difficult circumstances like the ones in fragile states it will even be there will be less enthusiastic about such an attempt thank you I'm wondering whether regarding national unity government maybe I'll go already to the to the direct trade question is your diplomatic hat on or off yeah I think so I think I go to the clearly to the question I think very good questions of the CFR from CFR I think your questions were and also I think the second question was that if it is that big maybe should we just let it be too big to too big to get rid of maybe I think what is important to not forget is the fact that when after the fall of the Taliban this was already inherited I mean when we came out of that war that the drug trade haven't grown so strong in Afghanistan it already arose from those decades of conflict so it did also very much of course feed the anarchy or the criminal economy of the Taliban and other networks in the country which I think very interesting is though that it is in our religion this is of course something that is totally considered a sin I was often thinking that can't we focus more on having our religious scholars also supporting us in that and also there was also a time during the Taliban where it was completely banned again but then it rose again again I think money speaks louder than anything else so it was very necessary for the networks for them to sustain in terms of if we should just let it be I think the question is definitely no the answer is definitely no I think there is voices always different voices that would say that well for particularly for the poppy cultivation there is this need for illicit morphium also and for medical purposes can't Afghanistan be the big producer of that and can we just support I think this is not as sustainable as any need for that much of morphium in the world fortunately I think Afghanistan would probably seriously be around 500% of what is needed in the world and then also that again I mean that is business I mean there is countries already I think it's Turkey and others that are already producing that illicitly so we will not be able to take that away and I think enough for us to compete with the pharma industry I think this is not yet I think our Minister of Agriculture he's often being asked he's actually just here a couple of weeks ago in Washington he's very often asked he likes to talk practically about agriculture and how to move forward and he has a good vision very practical as well he's often however asked about the drug economy and poppy cultivation mostly he doesn't really appreciate the question that much he would always say that the reason why a ton of livelihoods or agriculture has not grown the way it should have and could have is very much because those counter-nacotics efforts were solely counter-nacotics efforts and the linkage also between a functioning agricultural system in smaller communities as well he had very nice examples of communities in Nangahar that had a lot of security problems for a long time also post-2001 and had focused very much on agricultural development have become self-sufficient themselves and have therewith also removed security problems there was fighting there was an insurgency that is not now there anymore so I think I know there has been the discussions on certain crops being an alternative I think again the counter-nacotics efforts of the last decade and more it did start with physical eradication of crops I mean really said Afghan farmers sent out and physically removed the poppies which has then also been suspended unfortunately I think it is definitely a very complex and very large phenomenon problem it is also that the demand for this is there worldwide it is not that Afghanistan creates that for its own consumption this is the demand comes from comes globally comes mostly from rather western countries as well so I think the it is a shared problem and it will be difficult to share that responsibility but I think it has to Thanks Matthias you have the advantage of having had the longest time to think about your answer and the disadvantage of being the one thing that stands between this crowd and the buffet so that's why I'm going to get the shortest answers come back to your question about civilian military cooperation especially after I have went into these areas to be honest that always proved to be the problem the plan in theory looked very nice we go in ISAF liberates or expels the Taliban from there but then of course there has to be a follow up there has to be a follow up by Afghan government agencies and that was the first problem sometimes they did not have enough qualified people sometimes they sent people who drove the population back to the arms of the Taliban because they were simply to corrupt and sometimes they had people but they didn't want to go there they simply refused and it was the same with the western institutions the UN was supposed to coordinate that but apparently that was a task simply too big for them because they also had to coordinate all these NGOs to bring them some NGOs didn't want to go they said this is not safe enough which was funny because some of them were pretty much on the moral high ground in their consideration of the military saying we are here to do the good and actually you're doing the bad but then they didn't want to go to areas where it's not safe where the soldiers were not before them to be honest that has always been the greatness of the plan and that's why ISAF never really succeeded but it's not the military task to do that it can only set the conditions for reconstruction and development but it can't do the reconstruction development itself so that always remained the problem and all of ISAF has been fairly aware of that but there was no way to solve that problem coming to your question of the night raids actually that did become a very big issue and you were right when you were saying it was President Karzai as well as parts of Jiroa massively objecting the continuation of the night raids one thing the night raids were basically ISAF's sharpest blade as we say it because they were enabled us to put the Taliban under such a permanent pressure because they were going after low level, mid level and high level Taliban leadership and they could not even recover because they could never feel safe so they have been forced to relocate house every evening some of them others were targeted and killed as a result the higher Taliban leadership at some point even refused to come back after the winter break to Afghanistan and feared to be targeted which had a strong effect on the mid and low level Taliban leadership because that did not exactly boost their morale because they said well our leadership is staying there, safety but they are expecting us to continue the fight but finally as it ended was in early 2012 there was an agreement signed by ISAF and the Afghan government that all night raids had to be overseen and coordinated with ANSF before so they could not take place just on an ISAF basis and from that time it got slightly better also the special forces team became mixed Afghan special forces with the American special force and from that time there were still complaints especially since the Taliban identified this as major weakness and tried to exploit it in an immediate campaign but finally they continued but in a very different way lunch is served in the large space downstairs but let's take a moment because this is a very good time could I have your attention please thank you good afternoon great host of USIP thanks for lunch also our other sponsors AICGS and DAG I'm Gail Maddox I'd like to reiterate this last panel challenges during the upcoming decade of transformation which I would say might be decades of transformation the first and second panel several people mentioned the importance of looking ahead of thinking about how to implement lessons learned for Afghanistan how to think about the way forward and what we'd really like to do in this panel then address the challenges that will be confronting we being the US Germany and more generally the alliance of course and those who have been involved very heavily since 2001 which I think the total number maybe not all at one time is actually 50 which is a lot of nations where should our priorities be what should be our civilian priorities what should be our military priorities need adequately to train the Afghan help in the training and assisting of the Afghan national armed forces and the police how can we better coordinate our efforts across the coalition which is something I've looked at quite a bit in a recent in a recent study and looked particularly also at bilateral cooperation issues as well as multilateral a lot of times we've done some of this on the fly people have individual very positive stories to tell but sometimes not as positive in the larger in the larger sense beyond security what do we what are the needs that should be bolstered where should our funds actually be developed and directed good governance rule of law human rights education the numbers that we heard in the first panel about how education has improved and what a big jump we've done and what we can expect to continue to do if the funding there if the emphasis and the focus remains there and I think that those are big ifs and I look forward to hearing from our panelists what kind of institutional restructuring may be necessary agriculture we talked about a lot in the last panel and I think is an important area and of course corruption again a very critical area have jobs been neglected as one person on the panel emphasized and I think it would be good to hear from our panelists on that issue and some at Jim Dobbins criticize that we had brought in too few forces I'd love to hear some of the comments from our experts here can we do the training assistance that we need to do in the Resolute Support Mission we've just both countries have just announced increases in the numbers of forces is this where we should be or should we be should we be further than that we're clearly not going to stay in Afghanistan the way we stayed in Japan and the way we stayed in Germany from the point of view of the United States but are we sufficiently planning for beyond that in other words what are we trying to do what should be the roles even of the UN of the OSCE who should we bring into this very important effort of Afghanistan and Afghanistan's future because that's what's really I think critical to be thinking about so with that I would like to I'm sitting in the middle because I can I can I can send this easier so all of you should be writing down your questions so that we'll have lots of time for questions and I think I'll start then shall I start down with Bill Hammack Hammack he was in Afghanistan on mission as mission director for USAID really just very very recently he came home in October of this year and he's now here at USIP for an interagency professional in residence his expertise being used then on detail from USAID here at USIP so why don't you start us off? Great thank you very much Gail good afternoon everybody I'm trying to stay awake in the afternoon and so I will be brief bring some anecdotes and some experience from the last 26 months that I had in Kabul as head of USAID I think a few key points one is that a lot of people talked about 2014 as the year of transition well clearly and this is something we talked a lot about in Kabul it's not just 2014 it's 2015 and we're looking hopefully to see in 2016 a year of implementation for some of the commitments made by the government I think that we have seen over the last year a significant improvement I think in terms of Afghan led especially on the development side starting with the London conference I think you're all aware of the realizing self reliance paper President Ghani and the government put forward at that conference it was viewed by the international community as a very good reform agenda and there was strong commitment at that point to support the government I think we all came out of London with a lot of hope and enthusiasm I think that it took a lot longer to move some things forward most of the cabinet wasn't named until May it just took quite a while to get things going I think it's very important at this point to take a look at what happened at the recent senior officials meeting which was held in Kabul September 5 of this year some of the documentation that the donors spent a lot of hours with key government counterparts on over the summer included what they call the self reliance mutual accountability framework or SMAF which basically took the place of TMAF that was a long discussion between the donors and the government on whether or not this new government needed to stick to TMAF which was really the Karzai government commitments to move forward with kind of their own and at the end of the day they agreed that this so called SMAF document which is available online if you haven't seen it it contains a lot of the TMAF principles around good development effective development but also it really contains the priorities and commitments leading to Brussels so it's really a roadmap for the next year looking at Brussels and I think that helped a lot of donors especially some of the Nordics and others with their parliaments to continue the substantial amount of funds a few other things the government came out with what they called the first mile progress report for the some they gave themselves grades again some of the key categories of actions and reforms from the London realizing self-reliance paper most of the grades were B, B minus but it was an attempt to be quite honest and straight forward reviewing again some of the documents from the senior officials meeting what really hit me again is the understanding in fact this is in the communique by the co-chairs of the legacy of the previous administration that this government has inherited a broken and corrupt system at the same time the World Bank Vice President who spoke mentioned about the impact of transition being more profound on social and economic recovery being slower than expected and so I think that really made everybody pause and not be in such a hurry looking to the future let me just throw out some of the key things that the donors and the government really focused on and these are not surprises major near term issues and we've already discussed some of these during today obviously the economy again there hasn't been the recovery there hasn't been the bounce in the recovery that many expected back in 2013 following the elections and this transition jobs you may have seen recently President Ghani announced so called peace jobs for peace program something they've been talking about for a while to expand the NSP in rural areas poverty if you've seen the recent World Bank report poverty levels have not decreased over the last 13-14 years this is something that I think this government is very interested and donors need to be much more concerned about what kinds of programs can really impact on that private sector development and investment again that hasn't we haven't seen that bounce back and fiscal deficits I mean that is continuing there's almost a structural fiscal deficit in the government and they're working hard on increasing revenues but that's something that's going to take a while let me just throw out a few key foundational issues that I think the government's moving on several of these but it's going to be extremely important if they're going to be able to show a real difference over the next decade obviously we've talked a lot about stability and security today that's key what I call government capacity broadly across the government especially at the national level also of course at provincial level one of my first meetings with the new minister back in the spring of a very important technical ministry he told me that he had taken a look at his ministry and 18 out of the 22 departments were completely manned by contractors funded by donors through kind of short-term off-budget contracts and so that's clearly not sustainable and other ministers told me the same thing so civil service reform is going to be key and President Ghani just last summer in July signed a decree to amend the capacity building for reform program a key part of ARTF and also perhaps just as importantly all the donors agreed to what's called salary harmonization for all of the national state that different donors fund both on-budget and off-budget another procurement reform key reform impacting on corruption across the board we heard that earlier President Ghani and Dr. Bula have taken the lead in kind of chairing Saturday night meetings reviewing all the contracts government contracts at first there was a lot of criticism because they slowed the process down so the donors feel it's been a very important process and now they're incorporating that not just at that level but also within each key ministry that there's a lot of procurement public financial management reform that's something that the government's focusing on right now and it's not so much keeping track of expenditures what it is as we heard from the DCM earlier it is making sure that policy is linked to budget and budget's linked to policy and priorities of the government decentralization and sub-national governance recently I met with the Jelani Pope Paul the head of IDLG gave a presentation to heads of agency and basically said that some 12% of districts have no district governor some 40% of districts have no national judicial presence in terms of staff or experts in the same in terms of line ministry representatives at district level so there needs to be a lot of work whether you start at the provincial level first and build capacity and then to district or how to use the CDC's or community development commissions and then tackling underlined drivers of corruption we've heard that all day today that's extremely important especially for legitimacy of the government agriculture is the driver of growth especially in the next many years as we heard earlier and then of course the extractives eventually to kick in in terms of providing key revenue it may not be a big jobs source but it definitely will be very important for the government to continue to move towards basically taking the responsibility for their own development and not almost 80 some percent requiring donor assistance so let me stop there thank you very much thank you very much Gail the agenda that you have proposed is of course much longer than this panel will ask so what I try to do is just I want to I would like to go along the questions that were addressed to us as panelists and throw out a couple of thoughts that might inspire the question and answer session in the aftermath the first one is on the the viability of current assistance programs in Afghanistan so what is important to me is that in the wake of NATO's withdrawal and even without a military aid delivery infrastructure that was provided by the PRT some civilian assistance programs could still continue in the more insecure country and that is particularly due to the well-established NGO practice working in insecure areas so my first point was would be then to just to rely more to invest trust into the Afghan NGO network that has access to many actors also in insecure areas secondly donors seem to better understand the need to focus on capacitating Afghan government institution in the field of project management which is vital for the sustainability of development projects and third the current unity government of Afghanistan provides an opportunity for reform but the viability of assistance programs for largely depend on helping to fulfill its own reform agenda and commitments by supporting it and formulating and implementing a convincing strategic plan to that end and my fourth point is that it's not been mentioned so far throughout the day is that one of the most crucial challenges relates to the urban rural divide in this country because that is basically accountable for its additional lack of opportunities a lot of mistrust in governmental institution that exists it relates also to the stronghold of the Taliban in rural areas especially also in remote areas and it is to a large degree also a means to justify the Taliban opposition against the big Kabul based administration second was activities have had the greatest impact and should have priority in funding and many to us community driven development implemented by the World Bank and the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development has had a positive impact on local and district level governance provision we have found out in our research that the highest level of trust exists into the CDC the Shura complex so to say those institutions that have been elected at the local level and so the level of trust is here in the two provinces where we have undertaken our research about 80% while if you go higher up to the district provincial and state level the level of trust is decreasing at large now second point despite justified criticism I think that was mentioned already by Hila Alam the rural economy in Afghanistan has become more self-sufficient and has been also least affected by the limitation of flow of foreign funds third international aid investment in health education has brought about substantial gains which is critical in terms of public presence and legitimacy of the state and the country's long-term economic development and finally despite many flaws for example being episodic or non-demand driven programs aimed at enhancing government capacity have helped to build a physical machinery for service delivery which makes people experience day by day the fruits of state building the third question is what institutional structures have been necessary to assure that the gains for the Afghan population can be maintained basically I would say all are necessary however there's no institutional structure that could be said to stand out in terms of success so the record overall is mixed for instance the high office of oversight so the anti-corruption body is a necessary institution but is perceived of being corrupt itself the national human rights commission is a necessary institution it has however set on a report of human rights violations by powerful warlords and never published it the election commission and electoral control commission are widely believed to be biased and corrupt but they are absolutely fundamental to the state building process so what I mean with that is that better planning is required and that also applies to the still high level of fiscal dependency so long term predictable support at reasonable levels would encourage domestic and foreign private investment in economic gains finally investment Afghanistan's younger generation will help also sustain achievements in basic rights and freedoms especially for also for women and girls but it is also a crucial topic for media and civil society finally the last question what should be the respective roles of UN NATO and the European Union as far as NATO is concerned set many times today continued support is necessary especially air capacity and close air support training inclusive including combat training apparently if you see what has happened in Kandahar the last two days of Afghan national security forces enhancing the intelligence capacity of the ANSF and what is also important is kind of political messaging in terms of continued support to the public UN its mere existence is a positive political signal of continued international support but it should avoid becoming involved in issues related to development and governance for which it neither has the capacity nor the infrastructure to undertake such activity so it could continue with its donor coordination role but with a clear handover plan to the Afghan government other UN agencies are currently seen by the Afghan president as a competitor to the Afghan government in terms of attracting donor funds and undermining the government capacity to deliver so they do not have a clear exit strategy which is a big problem to hand over to the Afghan government which can also perpetuate the weakening of state capacity and what is also criticized they are expensive and have an incentive to stay in the country rather than to leave European Union European Union can continue its development support and political support to the peace process it can also throw its weight behind the regional dimension of the peace process by engaging with Pakistan Iran and China and finally I would say that that is also important to share facts and figures and also the positive narratives that counter that are able to counter an overwhelmingly negative image that the results of the support missions tend to tell so more positive stories about what has been achieved in the country could really help also to make the international support sustainable but also to make the Afghan people believe in the success of this reform process that's a number of years previously as director of the Afghan and Afghan programs and he and I have talked about doing this several times so I'm glad it finally worked out so please Andrew thank you Gail and thank you all of you the survivors who have lasted so long and surviving the post lunch session there is coffee outside if you feel the need I testified I started working in Afghanistan in the mid-80s with a couple other people in this room Paul Fishtine lurking in the back corner and so witness our first hand the price of when the US I think prematurely disengaged from Afghanistan and didn't invest sufficiently in trying to reach a political settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan and last week I testified at a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing on Afghanistan and really that was my main message is let's not repeat that mistake and prematurely disengage and I think that's my overarching message for the future looking forward in Afghanistan as well there's a reason certainly for the US why we went there and it was not primarily because of our concern for the needs of Afghans it was because of 9-11 the threat of terrorism and that was been made clear in a lot of the US policy pronouncements since and if indeed that's why we went to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for transnational terrorist groups or destabilizing its neighbors and nuclear armed Pakistan in particular is of concern that threat has not gone away and so I think if that's been the rationale for being there all these years as that threat seems to be growing rather than receding it wouldn't seem to make sense from a US national interest perspective to be using this time to disengage so I think I just wanted to emphasize again why the US has been engaged there and why it would be important not to disengage which is why other panelists earlier today have highlighted I think the importance of the upcoming Warsaw meetings in terms of reiteration of commitments on the security front but also just as importantly Brussels that the civilian assistance is going to be critically important moving forward and others have highlighted it but that the economic crisis in Afghanistan is not getting nearly the attention it deserves I mean I think it's probably the single biggest threat to the legitimacy of the national unity government even more so than the deteriorating security situation and I think we're seeing that in terms of the large numbers of Afghans who are voting with their feet to try to get out of the country primarily a lot of that with the young men because of the economic crisis so I do think I just wanted to highlight those things and in that regard I also as Ambassador Cunningham mentioned welcome President Obama's decision to reverse his earlier decision and to remain engaged in Afghanistan with a 9,800 troop level through 2016 like Ambassador Cunningham I wish that decision had come a year earlier if not before I think we paid a heavy price but I'll take what I can get I think it's a positive signal of the US commitment but I think not fully registered with everyone which I think is probably even more significant than the decision to keep troop levels at 9,800 through next year is the decision with a number attached to it 5,500 for beyond that period which at one level it's a useful device to show that numbers are decreasing but of course come January 2017 another presumably president inaugurated in America and so to me the importance of this decision is that it allows for our bases in Kandahar Jalalabad, Bagram to remain open and then it will be up to the next president to make his or her own assessment of the situation on the ground and then decide on whether that 5,500 number is the right one or the wrong one and so I think the fact that now that decision is left open for the next president to decide is a very positive feature and I think backed up certainly by the very impressive commitment that Germany has made in terms of increasing troop levels at this difficult time I think is a very encouraging sign to Afghans about the longer term commitment which I do now think really needs to be matched also by the Afghans taking and the Afghan government taking the issue of governance and effective governance much more seriously I think if there's one lesson to be learned from the last 14 years the problem in Afghanistan cannot just be addressed through military means alone we need that complimented by good governance and I think there's an opportunity there and on the one hand I think we have a much weaker government than we have and it seems to be getting weaker on the other hand it is a government that I do think certainly in terms of the leadership more reform oriented than its predecessor and so there's an opportunity for a partnership there that we didn't really have before and that's been one of my consistent criticisms of a lot of our previous policies in Afghanistan is that for example our coin well coin was premised on the idea of let's go out and have a bottom up approach and win the hearts of the minds of the people to support the government and PRTs were going to extend the reach of the central government and I think all of that strategy actually I think might have made sense if we had an Afghan government partner that shared that strategy but at the time we didn't I think President Karzai's strategy which ultimately proved to be a more effective one was ultimately to stay in power and to do that through patronage means and so he I think very effectively used a lot of the vast resources that the international community pumped into the country to sustain patronage networks and that was his model of staying in power and I think it worked very well for him and those who were had access to resources but it certainly was completely contradictory to the objective of coin of winning hearts and minds of people over to a relatively corrupt and predatory government so so moving forward again I do think we have an opportunity now to be more aligned with the government but we do need to see much more action from that government in terms of more effective governance moving forward I have a bit of a dilemma because I again as Paul mentioned seven or eight years ago you know came across this interesting USAID report that John Sopko referred to earlier and I've never heard anyone mention this report before and so last night when I was thinking of what to do in terms of lessons for the future I thought wouldn't it be clever to dig up that report and come up with some of the findings from that and then do exactly what John Sopko did but proving his worth as a credible investigator he did his investigation and came across that before nevertheless I'm going to quickly just go over a few of the points that were made in that report which was contracted by USAID in 1988 the Soviets they were withdrawing from Afghanistan I was working in Peshawar at the time with agencies working cross-border in Afghanistan and we were all tasked with coming up with our strategies to move our offices from Peshawar where many of the international NGOs were based as well as Afghan NGOs or Quetta or Islamabad into Kabul once the Soviets withdrew the Najibullah regime collapsed and everything was going to be fantastic and this report was basically contracted to look at what lessons are there from the large USAID program from 1950 to 1979 a lot of people forget Afghanistan was the largest per capita recipient of foreign assistance in the world for much of that period because of the Cold War era but again one of the points that John mentioned was again the U.S. assistance program in Afghanistan was over ambitious both as to scale and in timing and in many ways the program was larger than could be effectively administered by either the U.S. or Afghan government and yet I now see that as an opportunity of right sizing I think we're no longer going into that phase of being overly ambitious and as long as we can not go which we have a tendency of one extreme of trying to do too much to the other extreme of trying to do too little in a short period of time which I think would be incredibly destabilizing and we're already seeing many of the effects of that if we can get it into that golden mean I see a lot of opportunities for actually the quality of assistance improving moving forward as with shrinking resources we are forced to prioritize before everything was a priority and people are trying to do everything and so as we heard before aid coordination was much more much more difficult to do I think it would also remove some of the perverse incentives of where a lot there's so much money that one of the preeminent incentives was basically maintaining your burn rates use it or lose it in terms of budgets and I think now with smaller amounts there could be I think a significant increase improvement in the quality of assistance moving forward the second thing point was time scales you know again quote US expectations of the time required to achieve effective project results in Afghanistan were generally unrealistic and we all know I mean these short term time frames just killed us in Afghanistan I mean again another lesson to be learned is you can't do you know state building on one year contracts year after year you need the long term approach and I think is there an opportunity now moving forward where you know the dynamics have changed I think there's more realism permeating the situation where we can recognize the need to be engaged for the longer term and come up with some longer term approaches to how to strengthen the institutions of the state in particular now again that I think we have a partner in the government that's committed to reforming how can we work in partnership with them to move some of those forward in more realistic time frames for strengthening state institutions a couple of the other things the quote the high US staff turnover in the aid mission was a weakness which worked against the sustained and more successful technical assistance program unfortunately I don't think that one's going to go away I think it's in one of the earlier sessions I think it was John Sopko who is I think praising the military in terms of the lessons their ability to do lessons learned and quite critical the civilians however I think one of the real curious things for me is we paid an incredibly heavy price again in Afghanistan for the rapid turnover of personnel civilian and military we all knew this you know here's a report talking about this is a problem in the 1950s and 60s and people were probably there on two or three year tours at a minimum and we were doing initially for six months or nine months or then one year and then you know and then for some of the civilians if we're lucky and had someone like Bill here two years but two wars later after Iraq and Afghanistan tremendous you know expenditure of blood and treasure also prestige wars that we wouldn't necessarily categorize as winning we're unable to change some of these basic incentives structures in terms of how the U.S. operates in these kind of situations so I think again I'm not optimistic we're going to fix that but it's so incredibly important the other point was which again John mentioned was the U.S. generally had too much confidence in the applicability of technical solutions to complex social and economic development problems and of the appropriateness and transferability of U.S. values and experience and you know I think to me this is another one of the real important points is the importance again of understanding context but also understanding politics you know I've said this in several other similar for where like the U.S. we have sort of two tools in our armory when it comes to these kind of things one is our military money and we can deploy those with a vengeance but often the problems as they are in Afghanistan are fundamentally political problems for which the military money can be effective but if you don't have a clear overarching political strategy and when you have such overwhelming presence of on the military front which leads to I think often having military strategies that are not clearly aligned with political strategies as I think coin was one example I think we often fail and so I think to me you know there seems to be more sensitivity about interfering in politics however when you send 140,000 international troops to Afghanistan I kind of view that as interfering in the internal affairs of Afghanistan or you know on the budget side we were clearly overwhelmingly dominating you know at least the listed economy and yet we're much more reluctant to actually have a political strategy in these kind of situations and I think that's going to be critically important and I guess maybe I'll just end with the point that I think Jim Dobbins made was the need to prioritize a peace and reconciliation component early on and you know we missed that opportunity but I think it's still there I think you know those of us who understand this as a peace institute person but you know I think again another clear lesson is that there isn't a military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan and as difficult as it is and I'm personally not terribly hopeful that in the short term there's going to be any grand bargain leading to peace in Afghanistan but we need to be constantly having that inclusive political process and settlement as the objective that we're striving for opportunities you know to seizing them when they arise as we've missed those in the past when they weren't front and center as a priority for the U.S. So I think I'll end on that note. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me turn now to Ambassador Flaus Sheria he most of you many of you will know him he became ambassador here in 2006 a lot of the negotiations too on this side, on the government side when needed Thank you, Gail I would like to broaden my reflections a little bit beyond Afghanistan I would like to ask the question what are the lessons we learned in Afghanistan which we can use for challenges in crisis management and stability transfer in general and so for all future stabilization and nation building efforts and I'm specifically I will think what can we learn from our Afghan experience also for Syria for maybe Middle East for territory occupied by ISIL and other operations and I will draw of course of failing states and I will also draw on experiences we made in the Balkans, in Libya, in Iraq I will try to formulate 10 thesis don't be afraid, they will be short and very short actually and you can deepen that in the discussion if you want to before I come to these 10 thesis of course I have to say that they do not apply equally to all future cases because it has been said these are only rules of thumb because each country in each case will be slightly different but my first thesis is let's make it as multilateral as possible let's cast the net as wide as possible of course we start with our friends and Jim Dobbins I think was it who said already that the reason was of course that Germany went to Afghanistan was solidarity with the United States after 9-11 that was the number one reason and so we start with our friends but I think we should not stop with our friends we should also look for instance in the case of Syria and of the case of ISIL we should look at other maybe less likely partners for those operations like Russia, like China and I for instance we made a big effort in the 1990s to include Russia in our Bosnian operation we went all of our way to include them and it finally worked we actually had to change the rules to make it work but it worked and so that's my number one my number two is use the existing capabilities of international organization and also of international organizations whenever possible and whenever that is realistic for instance NATO has a unique command and control structure which the coalitions of the willing don't have and for instance the EU but also NATO have logistical capabilities which other countries don't have and you Gael mentioned also the OSCE and the OSCE might play a role in some of the conflicts maybe not as a device not as a decisive role as the EU and NATO but it is important I think it was already mentioned by many before that it was a huge mistake between 2001 and 2003 not to use NATO it's like using the fiat that you have on the road and leave the Mercedes in the garage it is not a wise thing and I think we paid for that it was also not wise to have two separate operations and you had US led enduring freedom in addition to the framework nation concept and I think it was a huge step forward when in 2003 we merged all these operations and which we also handed it over to NATO what became ISAF third point you always need a political process to accompany any operation that is absolutely key and that process has to be twofold it has to be a process inside the country in question and also a process which includes all the outside players we learned that quite painfully in the Balkans we had a process for the outside players which was very helpful but I think only in Afghanistan in the Petersburg conference we learned that and to look at the future I think we should not underestimate the importance of the so-called Vienna process for Syria fourth point I can be short on that because much has been said about that we have to make our approach as comprehensive as possible also that we learned in the Balkans we defined it in Petersburg but it remained theory until 2004 we had divergent objectives and unfortunately on many levels we had divergent objectives and some people already mentioned it inside our countries in Germany you could clearly see it I had to deal as State Secretary with it every week inside the country but also between countries between partners of the coalition and so we have we have a very very difficult very important lesson to be learned this comprehensive approach must include positive incentives which have to be linked like security, development good governance, rule of law, health education infrastructure, police disarmament but also negative ones you need always a way to punish the one who does not comply with the rules either by the military by the police or also by cutting off financial funds for instance support for Taliban or ISIL in the future fifth lesson there must be a balance between military and non-military measures we learned that after the Kosovo war when we realized that we needed the stability pact and that's what we created in 1999 and you need a balance between those two things which I just mentioned between incentives and intervention and we for instance we had the case of Iraq where the intervention was too much militarily done or was near the other problem where we were in the first two years not military enough sixth thesis don't make regime change the overall objective because lasting change can only come from within lasting change in the country can never be brought by from the outside about by foreigners this has some aspects the first aspect is that the proposed measures have to be accepted in the country where they are supposed to be implemented that means you need acceptance and for that you need also this political process which I talked about and then you need local ownership and you need basically indigenous institutions which carry them out there's a difficult problem related to that the problem how many of the old structures you keep very difficult problem I think in Iraq the decision was to dismantle those and I'm not talking only of the administration I'm talking also of police and military of the armed forces and how much do you keep I think the problem first came up in 1945 in Germany and and how many players of the old regime you leave in some position because they have knowledge but of course they're also tainted so this is a huge problem I think it needs to be addressed openly and it doesn't get better by not addressing it and you have to balance keep the country functioning and not decreasing legitimacy by keeping too many people of the old regime seven thesis you need internal reforms that's very touchy because of course it's very important to have good governance to fight corruption to have education extremely key but you on the other hand be careful not to destroy the culture of the country so also this is a balancing act also this is touchy and you must really condition sometimes what you give to a country by looking at the fact if internal reforms are implemented 8th point and I think Andrew has already reminded us that this was this morning very important point by Jim Dobbins reconciliation is absolutely key it's a process which you need at the country I think for instance in Iraq it was did not really succeed between the Sunnis the Shiites and the Kurds I think the best example is South Africa I think in South Africa I think it was achieved in Afghanistan I think the balance is mixed we try to have a conversation with the Taliban between the end of 2010 until mid-2012 the Taliban didn't want it and therefore it didn't come to fruit my second last point strategic patients we need the quality of long distance runners some of these things will take 20 30 years George Marshall I mentioned already yesterday said in 1941 to FDR don't forget democracies can't sustain wars longer than 5 maximum 6 years so we need to finish the job at the maximum 5 years and of course there's also the effect that occupying forces always breed resentment inside the country my last point already the 10th point already addressed this morning aggressive expectations and overly ambitious objectives in the country but also at home again this is a problem of democracy it is a problem of democracy because in a democracy you need to get the support of parliament of your public and that's why Wilson after in the middle of the first world war he said we have now we fight a war and all wars he spoke of self determination of all peoples he spoke about the fight of democracies against authoritarian regimes although of course Russia wasn't that democratic so I think we made the mistake to promise too much in Afghanistan but also to our own publics we told them we will get all the girls to school and we will get perfect education Jim Dobbins again was right when he said let's not compare with other global countries but with the regional countries and I think also it is right that the aim is not to enhance GDP in some other country but to create a society at peace with itself and its neighbors thank you very much our final speaker has spoken but would like to speak directly to the topic of this panel which we greatly appreciate and so I'll turn it over to Ambassador Cunningham thank you I'll be very brief and not elaborate much on the three points that I want to make but following up on the same theme that Klaus did about extracting from the Afghan experience certain key lessons that will be applicable in the future in other places where I'm afraid we will be required to use them the first is and we talked about this quite a bit this morning in various facets is the importance of this civil civilian military relationship and the kinds of conflicts or crises that we're going to be dealing with in the future we will they won't be the same as Iraq or Afghanistan they'll be different but the core principle of having an alignment of civilian and military personnel and goals and objectives and policies will remain central I'm convinced to our ability to deal with these things that requires a clarity of goals that sometimes difficult to provide and it requires learned habits of cooperation at least in the American system our civilian component of our government and the military components are quite different in their training and their orientation as we saw in Afghanistan and Iraq to understand and respect each other and to work together for the common good if they understand what the common good is so we're going to need military strategies in all of these places to align with each other and support each other as we go forward the second is the importance of timely political decision making and this is something that you can say until you're red in the face and can't force anybody to do it and politicians don't like to make timely decisions if they can avoid it but what we've seen repeatedly going through in Afghanistan and elsewhere Iraq other places and we're seeing it right now in crises that we're trying to deal with is that we're we end up in a situation where we're responding to failure instead of ensuring success and that's very costly and it's dangerous and as as publics we should be demanding of our political leaders that they do more about ensuring success and do less about responding to failure the third point I wanted to make following up again on the thought that Klaus and some others made about the need for strategic patience and only get strategic patience when you explain to your people why that's required, why it's necessary and we need to do a better job of that I found when I was dealing with visitors in Afghanistan many visitors from the congress and other places that if you sat down and explained to them what it is we were actually about in trying to achieve and what we were achieving where the challenges were and it's not something that governments like to do with their people it certainly has not been something that the Obama administration has wanted to spend very much time on with the American people because governments don't like to tell their people that they have a problem that they're going to be dealing with for another 10 or 20 years and we are going to be dealing with this problem in one form or another for another 10 or 20 years and we have got to find a way that will encourage them to understand and sustain the effort that's going to be involved whether it's in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the world we will be preparing to do I'm afraid thank you I think we have five very good commentaries remarks and let me open the floor for then your comments as they're trying to get the microphone maybe I'll start over here since the other two moderators always started over there do I have anybody here I'm exhausted yes please if you can say your name and affiliation thank you I was struck with something you said and I totally agree namely that if there is a regime change you need to be very careful whether you abolish established structures or you keep them to the extent possible and use them and what I saw for example in Iraq but also in Afghanistan was the lack of political leadership in defining what the actual course of action would be because in Iraq established structures like the police and the military were not just established and that was common consensus within the US administration and operation but the military seemed to believe that these structures would be kept in place and used whereas the CPA did away with them so following up and just supporting what you said the political leadership has to take these critical decisions to really ensure a unity of effort in the field and this is I think what has been missing to a certain degree in Iraq but also in Afghanistan thank you Jonas Kassel from the German Council on Foreign Relations maybe to tie in with my predecessor in the workshop we had in Berlin in April I think one of the open questions or lessons was that sometimes it might be necessary to withdraw the sovereignty of a state in order to enable useful state building at least for a certain period of time in order to create resilient state bodies and this would not really resonate with the 10 thesis you just proposed Mr. Sharia but maybe to all of you do you think that it is necessary to withdraw sovereignty for a certain period of time thank you General Bakken Yes I like at one comment and that's also a complementary part to reconciliation actually we in RC North were pretty successful with and that was the reintegration and disarmament of numbers exceeded by far all the other cases that we had in all the other RCs and this was mainly driven interestingly by the American deputy who exactly did not follow the procedures and that was the reason why he was successful in this so there is already a part that even in a more volatile environment you can do actually to appease the situation simply weapons of the market and to help people who want to give up the fight to return into society it's worth the effort and it helps actually then with the later part that is inevitable that's the overall political reconciliation process my question would be you mentioned that it might be also the time for others to step up in that role to mediate between maybe the Taliban it's not only the Taliban there are many other groups out there as the IMU as the Harkhani network and others and even dash forces are building up right now in Afghanistan is what country would be best suited I have my doubts when it comes to Russia because it is historically has been involved in that country and China always is not highly welcomed by the west though they have done a pretty good work when it came to spurring the economy there and they have never gotten the credits for it that they deserved but that might be the question if there is another Muslim country that might have that role where the Americans the west also could step back and say why don't you go into and take the political reins into your hands here and mediate between government and the armed resistance in Afghanistan let me take these three and then I'll come back and suggest that you either respond to one of our questions from the floor or if you want to make a comment about what someone else on the panel said that you agree with or don't agree with you could also use it for that reason First question on regime change as I said it's delicate there is no clear answer in each case you have to really weigh how much legitimacy am I going to give up to have a functioning body there, a functioning state or how much do I prefer to have a functioning system there is no clear answer just what I say is you have to make a decision on that early on actually on the very first day of the operation and basically already before you do the operation and you have to find agreement among all those people who couldn't operate just an example in the case of Syria it might be helpful to say to the Russians our first aim is not regime change it might be also one aim but that's not the first aim let the Syrians decide for themselves whom they want it's not our number one aim to have a certain regime or get rid of a regime slightly different in the Taliban case we had to get rid of them because they were responsible for 9-11 but each case is slightly different withdraw sovereignty I would say yes for whose question was it I would say yes but I think in each case slightly different you see in the German case in 1945 it was withdrawn totally for four years no German sovereignty whatsoever in other cases it was much less let's say let's not fool ourselves we of course I mean the intervening forces totally decided what happened in Kosovo for instance there was nobody on the ground who had anything to say except for the people who intervened NATO and later on the European Union and so on so I think you will always have a phase where sovereignty is very much limited I would say almost nonexistent the last question Russia and China maybe I was not clear enough I did not propose that they should mediate I didn't say that I think we should not do that we should not allow them to be the main mediator also in Syria there are other cases when we now do work on other problems, failing states but what I meant is we have to include them we have to take them with them with us let's not put them outside let's not push them away from us let's include them let them become also stakeholders so that they have a say I don't think it is in our best interest if we create situations where it is let's say the West against the rest of the world I don't think that's good let's try to cast a net as broad as possible but not allow necessarily Russia or China the leading role there should be there but I think the leading role should be to them I think in first of all I agree with what Ambassador Sharia said about the sovereignty issue sovereignty exists along a scale of absolute sovereignty with which very few countries have we all yield bits of sovereignty in our relations with other countries to a loss of sovereignty that occurs well for a period of time then the challenge is how do you restore sovereignty which we actually have a fair amount of experience in and that works pretty well I did want to say a word about reconciliation we have felt for quite some time and I still feel that this the process of reconciliation within Afghanistan has to be Afghan an Afghan to Afghan process there are lots of things that other countries can do to help that and encourage it but it fundamentally for a wide variety of reasons needs to be an intra-Afghan discussion and we voluntarily that is the United States Government decided in 2011 that we would no longer engage in discussions with the Taliban about Afghanistan without Afghan representatives in the room which I think Jim Dobbins pointed out this morning caused the Taliban to stop talking to us the challenge now is not to find a mediator the challenge I think is to find a way to change the to help Afghans change the relationship of the dynamic so that they can find a way to open the door themselves to a discussion with the Taliban or at least a faction of the Taliban that's interested in giving up the fight and joining in a political discussion about the future and that is going to involve finding some kind of modesty vendi with Pakistan as well so the United States and China most recently but many other countries over the years Germany, Norway and others have been quite helpful in trying to find ways to help open those doors but at the end of the day it is the Afghans who have to do it maybe just to follow on one point there I think right now the single most important thing that the US and I think our other international allies can do in terms of supporting the peace process is ensuring that the Afghan state doesn't collapse and ensuring that we have a legitimate state to actually negotiate with the Taliban I think right now in terms of the short term that short to medium term that will continue to be a top priority I did one other point I did want to make in the effort to be not too doom and gloom but maybe a little more optimistic in terms of identifying an opportunity looking forward and bear with me one more quote from this famous USAID report now the use of aid for short term political objectives in Afghanistan tended to distort sound economic rationale for development and in the process to weaken the longer term political interests of the United States aid as a tool of diplomacy has its limitations and I would add security when politically motivated commitments are at a much higher level and promise more than can reasonably be delivered in economic returns to me this is actually the single most important quote in this report and a real lesson relates to the research I was doing before challenging some of the assumptions around the effectiveness of aid in terms of achieving and promoting our stabilization our hearts and minds and security objectives I mean I think security was the number one need in Afghanistan and if there is an evidence that development assistance was really effective at promoting security objectives you know I think a very strong case could be made to militarize some of your aid to achieve that security objective however if it's not effective and indeed a lot of the evidence is counterproductive that the aid actually fueled the corruption that delegitimized the government that you know fueled the insurgency then it didn't make much sense to militarize our assistance and I think actually now that we don't have a strong big military presence throughout the country I think there's certainly downsides to that but one of the positive sides is I think there's a real opportunity moving forward to instill a lot more rationality in terms back into how we prioritize our development expenditures in Afghanistan moving forward and now I suspect that Bill Hammack for example was under a lot less pressure than some of his predecessors as USA admission directors in terms of having to spend all his budgets in the most insecure parts of Afghanistan where it's actually hard to do development so moving forward I think there's a real opportunity now to have a much more coherent and effective development strategy that's not so militarized as it was in the past just two brief comments one on the sovereignty and one on reconciliation as far as sovereignty is concerned it has an external and internal dimension and some some states are not sovereign because they have lost control over parts of their own territory and to restore the territorial integrity or the sovereignty the internal sovereignty it is required to find a way to create a kind of nationwide dialogue on alternative structures to what is what is existing on the ground there are some positive examples in transitioning societies like in South Africa but also Kenya later on Tunisia there are less successful example the Yemen there is some hope Sudan but in general the overall question is so how to create what I would call sufficient inclusivity and participation to restore a state that is based on rule of law and that has the monopoly on the use of force as far as reconciliation is concerned so we work on a lot of conflict transformation processes in conflict stricken countries I can only warn against the idea of having an orderly reconciliation process it's more about the avoiding a culture of impunity which is always a tendency especially in the early phases of negotiations to tolerate those actors that are the strong actors on the side of the power contenders and to accept them as serious negotiators and partners in the peace process and that is something that is looked at in the broader