Focus 580; Afghanistan Today, and in the Post-Election Period

Good morning welcome to focus 580 our morning talk program. My name's David Inge. Glad to have you with us in the first hour today we'll be talking about Afghanistan and the elections that took place there over this past weekend. And our guest for the program is David Edwards he's professor of anthropology at Williams College in Williamstown Massachusetts and he has been for some time now been following Afghan politics and studying Afghan history and writing about it. He is the author of a recent book titled Before Taliban genealogies of the Afghan jihad was published by the University of California Press in 2000 and to he's joining us this morning by telephone to talk. And as we do of course questions from listeners are welcome if you'd like to be a part of the program. You just pick up the telephone and call us if you're here in and around Champaign. Banner where we are the number is 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line that's good anywhere that you can hear us and that he has 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 calls are certainly welcome we just ask people to be brief brief as possible just so that we can accommodate as many

different callers as possible and keep things moving but of course anyone who is listening is welcome to call. Professor Edwards Hello. Hello David thanks for being with us again. I mean I really appreciate it. Well as people heard if they were just listening to the newscast obviously we know that it will be some time before there was an official result in the election. However I guess now we have exit polling everywhere and even in an Afghanistan and the initial indications are that the the leader and the polling is President Karzai who was acknowledged to be the front runner in the beginning. So that's not particularly a surprise. There have been questions raised about the process. Initially a number of candidates in fact I think almost all of them except Mr. Karzai said the election should be stopped it should be done over and now I think most of them have modified that comment somewhat and said that they at the very least they think that there should be an investigation into how it was conducted. But having said all that I guess I wonder what

you or what you think ultimately going to be the outcome and do you think that Mr. Karzai will end up being a clear winner. I think there's there is little doubt that he's going to win the one question is whether he's going to get the 50 percent majority that he needs to win outright or whether they'll have to be a final referendum in later in November. That's up in the air. I think that the main thing that everybody has hoped would come out of this election the assumption has been from the beginning that Karzai would be the victor but the the main goal of the process has been to provide legitimacy for his government and that that's the real stake in this and they have formed an independent commission to investigate the allegations of fraud in the multiple registrations. The problem with the ink that emerged during an election day and the commission is meeting now and they will begin the counting this soon as

that process is completed. Do you have any feeling about that issue of legitimacy about how this election was carried out. Well I think there are there are several stages the first stage was the registration process. I was spent last fall and Kabul and so I watched the beginning of the registration process and it was really. Bounded by how successful it ultimately turned out to be in the first month they were getting 60 and 70 people registering in the registration stations it was a pathetic result and so when they ended up by election time of registering 10 and a half million people it was it was astounding and indicated I think both that there was some success in the in the process but also there were clear indications of illegitimacy and how it was carried out not by the people who were conducting the registration by the people who were manipulating the process. There were cases particularly along

the border provinces the provinces bordering Pakistan which are majority pushed in. And also the area where the Taliban has been most pop powerful and where the government has least control in those areas you had registration that was so high that the U.N. to act actually had to up its end. The myth of the population because the number of people who are registered exceeded the the population estimates. So there were there were clearly indications that people were registering multiple times and there could be a variety of reasons for that. The prospect of selling their registration cards the prospect of being able to move the vote multiple times for their candidate. So there were indications early on that there were problems with their instruction but I think that while that's significant It should also not mask the fact that there was a tremendous amount of enthusiasm by Afghans for the process.

Given that you know I mean I think a lot of people would acknowledge the fact that yes all the way along there have been problems but also given the fact that the turnout was very high and there were significant numbers of women who said they were interested in having a voice. I think some people would say the fact that it happened at all in the way that it happened and that there were there was not a lot of violence. All of those things added together. We would have to say that that just on that basis that it was a success. I think the the that that that's true I think it. There was a high participation of women. That can mean a lot of things and it shouldn't be assumed that women are necessarily acting as independent operators and this their votes may be determined by their husbands or fathers but nevertheless there was a high turnout and there was everybody who was who witnessed the actual election and was struck by the enthusiasm the willingness of Afghans to wait in long lines to be part of this process. So I think that's that is a by itself a very hopeful sign.

What is zooming that the result is as we suspect and Mr. Karzai wins there are other candidates and some of them I'm sure would getting significant number would get significant numbers of votes particularly Yunus Qanuni who was the person who before the polling was acknowledged to be the the second guy behind you know behind Mr. Karzai. In fact he at one point was the part of Mr. Karzai's government. Are there are there other people. Who have enough standing or enough support so that we would expect that they would they would have a claim to be involved in in the next Afghan government. Well I think the the at this Should the short answer is nobody else. The Konami is the only candidate who could actually. Anybody expects that image if Karzai does not get that right majority he would be the person who interrupted that.

But I don't even think that's going to happen I think that cars they will probably get an outright majority. But communi is an interesting character he was a former minister of education under Karzai in this first Northern Alliance a government that was put together. He broke with. With Karzai in part because of ethnic politics in Afghanistan there was a sense that the alliance of punch. These are types who are associated with commander Ahmed Shah Masood the famous commander from punchier Valley who was killed two days before 9/11 by al Qaeda and he is the most significant political figure in the country in the sense as a as a political symbol. You still see his picture all over Kabul large posters in both and government sponsored posters and in individual shops. He's a very popular symbol for for the Afghan resistance for the years of suffering and struggle that they went through against the Soviet Union. So there were a whole lot

of people who were lesser figures who had surrounded themselves who had surrounded must suit and tried to gain some part of his legacy I can only as one of those. And there was a thought that last summer Karzai dismissed the Minister of Education was another one of these people from punch here and that this was an indication that he was going to sideline them that he was moving increasingly toward a Pashtun alliance and moving further away from the Tajiks and so kind of he tried to pull together a coalition that included these sidelined punch series Tajiks in order to stay. Basically basically an ethnic coalition to counter Karzai more toward questions. And this is if people remember back to the to the war to the US in invasion and the attempt to get rid of the Taliban. These people you're talking about from the punchier these were the people that generally get referred to as the Northern Alliance. Exactly

right here and I guess that points to one of the difficulties of Afghanistan is that there are a number of ethnic groups. The biggest are the Pashtun. Mr. Karzai is a Pashtun and then the next biggest are the Tajik and Mr. canoeing is Tajik and then we have others like the HAs are and those backs and another leading name General Abdul Rashid Dostum he is a news back so I guess the question that I'm getting at is when you have a nation like this that is made up of distinct ethnic groups that have been in conflict in the past can you really think about the idea of developing a kind of a national consciousness a real sense that above and beyond being pushed in or Tajik car or Uzbek or anything else and there are others that one is an Afghan. I think he can. It's a good question and I think it's and in fact the

question that Afghanistan has to has to address in the next decade. There are very strong local Legion says and ethnic alliances. They became more strong during the war against the Soviet Union because each of those areas became more independent autonomous from the central government more dependent upon each other armed groups that had not ethnic groups that had not been armed became armed during that time they became political powers in their own right. So this situation now is very different than it was say in 177 before the communist coup and that is going to affect electoral politics as it re develops in Afghanistan. At the same time I think there is a very strong sense of national consciousness. I think Afghans when they think of their country as separate they are afraid of the consequences of the central government collapsing. Even though there are. It was

Becks take the example of specks in the northern part of the country. There is an Uzbek is right across the border and to the north of Afghanistan you some people might assume that they would want to have an alliance with those who expects in his back some but I think that's not the case at all in fact they realized that they would be swallowed up in any kind of fragmentation of the country and I think the same is true of other of the other ethnic groups that they realize that their best chance is in a independent Afghan state. Our guest in this hour focus 580 is David Edwards he's an anthropologist professor at Williams College in Williamstown Massachusetts and has for some time now been studying Afghanistan and its history and its politics. And we're talking about the country about the recent election and questions are certainly welcome from people who are listening here in Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have the toll free line that's good anywhere that you can hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We do have a caller here to bring into the conversation

on our line one in Urbana. Hello hello. I'd like to know what percentage of the overall vote will come from the Kabul area. That's difficult to say right now and the monitors the election monitors who were in place there were not very many international monitors but there were quite a few domestic monitors. They were mostly in the Kabul area. I think we that's one of the difficulties of talking about Afghanistan and really of trying to institute electoral politics there is that there are not good census figures. We don't know the relative populations of the country a lot of them during the war years of the 80s. Three point two million Afghans who are refugees in Pakistan the other two million refugees and in Iran a lot of those people have returned to Afghanistan but many of them have have gone to Kabul. I lived in Kabul in the 1970s and at that time there were 600000 people there.

Now there are probably more than three million and many of those people are displaced internally displaced people who for one reason or other couldn't go back to their rural home districts so they've gone to Kabul to try to earn money as migrant laborers. So it's very difficult to to talk about. Demographics with any kind of concreteness and I think this is going to become particularly important during the scheduled next round of elections in the spring when the Parliament is supposed to be elected. Right now they are not. There's a lot of conflict over the boundary lines between districts about the number of districts that are allocated to push tunes versus Tajiks and other groups and without clear census figures it's going to be difficult to to be able to put those controversies to rest. I just wonder because apparently the Kabul area is the most secure area in many of the other areas are not that secure is that correct.

That's right. And the reason is because for the last since 2000 two and their International Security Assistance Force has been operating in Kabul about 7000 troops from now and now led by NATO a multinational troop I spent last fall I spent several weeks with the South peacekeepers and they are doing a very effective job of patrolling the streets of Kabul and which is a very important very important element to the whole equation in Afghanistan. Probably the worst period in Afghan history from the point of view of protect the people from Kabul before. The whole country with the early 90s. It was after the communists had been coming this government had collapsed the resistance parties the Mujahideen parties had all come into Kabul and claimed different neighborhoods and high ground in the mountains that surround and in the middle of the city. Different groups occupied these points and when they

couldn't agree on succession and couldn't agree on the way the witch power was going to be distributed they started firing at each other and whole neighborhoods were razed to the ground. And Afghans remember that period as the worst period of their history in part because these people that they had great hopes for these resistance fighters who had led the struggle against the Soviet Union when given power on their own had turned on each other. So it was a disastrous time and no one wants to see that happen again so the presence of international security forces on the streets are a source of great confidence building for the Afghans. I think you want to think you would just secure that above point further and you've spoken of this a little bit already I guess I'm interested in the perception that people often seem to have articulate that what constitutes the government of Afghanistan if we're talking in terms of the central government is. Really limited to Kabul and that the further outside of the capital you get the less kind of control the government has and more and more

end up with independent operators here and they're the people who are referred to as warlords who have their own military forces who are who have their own interests at heart and don't particularly feel beholden to the central government. How how close to the truth is that I why I think it is true the government has been unable and it's a bit's a massive task and that shouldn't be underestimated. And I don't think you can say it's outright failure it's partially a reflection of the complexity of the country and its long history. But it's true that Karzai has power dissipates the further away he gets from Kabul and a few other cities. Now a few things have emerged a few events have happened recently to indicate that they are trying to push the central government the power of the central government further into the countryside. One happened this summer when I was in Kabul when there was a local so-called warlord a term that I have some trouble with the use of for for that right now awoke a local warlord in Herat Province in the western part of the

country was in a dispute with Ismail Hahn the governor of the governor of Herat who was also a very powerful warlord in his own right and the central government used that as an opportunity to send in its own troops and basically to take. Ismail Hahn out of power and to put their own man in charge of Herat So that was a particularly contentious one because Ismail Hahn had been there since they've been in Iraq since the beginning of the fight against the Soviet Union. Locally a popular figure. But he's very independent and he also controls a lot of the revenues that come from border trade between Iran and Afghanistan that's one of the biggest places were tax revenues come in. And he was keeping the most of those tax revenues for himself instead of sending into the central government the central government wanted to get their hold their hands both on Iraq and on those tax revenues and so it was an indication of that the government was going to take a more active role in trying to

implant central government authority in areas that had previously been independent. Now whether that continues in other parts of the country remains to be seen. Let's talk with another caller the listeners in India. Toll free line one for well two questions. I'm hoping it's sensible one. What are the positions of the two leading contestants. Do they even have you know positions or is it just ethnic against ethnic. And secondly. It's almost being the question I mean the man that's in Kabul placed there by the Bush administration as a military to keep him there. Is that normally when we have voting in those kinds of situation doesn't the man who has the military guarding him and making sure that nobody does anything usually wins. Well let me take the first question first about the positions of the two leading candidates. Karzai saying Can any one of the difficulties one of the

drawbacks of the process was there was not a great deal of campaigning campaign the campaign period itself was limited to a month and during that time there were campaign rallies and in Kabul in the few other cities but there wasn't. The candidates didn't have the ability to get out into the countryside where most of the people live. And because there also isn't the same kind of media saturation that we have in the West. The media events that took place in Kabul were not widely seen outside of the of the city. So the campaign itself with some something of a sham. One of the major things that Karzai himself has has promised and will see whether he can deliver on it. I think it's a very important thing if you can and that is that right now the ministries there are a number of ministries to many ministries in Kabul that exercise the role of governance. And right now many of those ministries are effectively ethnic enclaves. They are the entitlements of particular

ethnic groups so that when one minister resigns for one reason or other he's replaced by somebody from the same. They met the group whether he's competent or not. And one thing that Karzai has promised is that he will both eliminate many of the non functioning ministries redundant ministries and he will put at their tops people at the in their in the leadership roles people who are competent technocratic leaped to minister who have experience in administration. And if he has a clear outright majority I think he will be in a position to do that. If he has of the might has a marginal victory then he's going to have to play more politics and bring people into his coalition to be able to effectively govern. One worry in that regard too is what happens with the parliamentary elections take place. Is there going to have to be more of this kind of deal making going on. The second quote Could you remind me of the second one and the second question essentially was look at the relationship between Mr. Karzai and the United States and would Mr. Karzai have been

in the position that he is without the support of the United States and I guess on that I would add a question about. How people in Afghanistan perceive him and do they see him as being America's man. They do and he is. And I think the original question that the caller asked about is that is that really fair. In the when you have such a disproportionate amount of power in the hands of the of the incumbent and I think that it's a good question I think the answer is No it really isn't fair and that's one of the complaints that a lot of the candidates had about the whole campaign period of a month before the election. Karzai had the ability to go to campaign rallies in helicopters provided by the United States. Other candidates didn't have that. He had security people surrounded him. Now that's good and bad because the security people are Americans. And one of the. Sources of greatest animosity right now is really

bitterness in Afghanistan that I notice was resentment about these private contractors who are the body guards of Karzai and who have different who are also the body guards too. So my hubby was the U.S. ambassador and other high ranking officials. These private contractors we came in who are into the news after the scandals that Ghraib Iraq and we don't have anything of that magnitude or at least we don't have the photographic evidence of anything of that magnitude in Afghanistan although there are rumors about similar kinds of incidents. But there is a great deal of animosity about the role of these contractors and I've seen it with my own eyes where when and the say the Embassador or the deputy ambassador goes through the city you know in a convoy of Humvees. These contractors will get out and go into the into the into the intersections and point their guns and drivers faces and they have no

they're very brutal and disrespectful of the Afghans they have a job to do of course. But the way that they conduct themselves is this often creates. Tremendous animosity in and in awe in August when I was in Kabul there was a major car bomb. The only real major active planned violence of the sort that happened in the run up to the election which was remarkable remarkable fact in itself but it this this was targeted at DynCorp one of the security companies the major security company that operates in Kabul. And the Taliban took responsibility for this car bomb nine people were killed. It was a very carefully planned orchestrated operation. But I and I happen to be close by when it happened and I was talking to people on the street watching this bystanders who were watching as the flames were coming up from the from the explosion. And they were not talking about the Taliban who they assumed were already that point even

before they'd taken responsibility assumed this was a Taliban operation. But they were talking about the Taliban what they were talking about were security contractors about how much they dislike these people. So it was a very it was a very well chosen target by the Taliban because it ended up deflecting attention from themselves and actually put attention on this this company that was creating a lot of animosity in the in the city. We are a little bit past the midpoint. Let me again introduce. Our guest for this part of focus 580 We're talking with David Edwards he's professor of anthropology at Williams College in Williamstown Massachusetts and has done a lot of writing and research on Afghanistan and its history and its politics. His recent book is titled Before Taliban genealogies of the Afghan jihad is published by University of California Press and came out in 2002. And questions are welcome three here on the show 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Also toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Before the election if you read the coverage

there were predictions that the Taliban would make efforts to use violence to disrupt the process and there it really didn't happen. And there if you read the coverage now indeed there are quotes from people like this. And for example from a Lieutenant General David Barno who's the commander of U.S. troops there he said speaking of the election he said it was a huge defeat for the Taliban the Taliban didn't show. What what do you make of this and what what can we say now about the Taliban and what sort of influence it has in Afghan politics. Well it's a good question and I think it's it's a question a lot of people are asking themselves right now because there were everybody in the international community in Kabul in September when I left was assuming that they they were based basically batting down the hatches assuming that there was going to be a lot of violence in this one car bomb that I mentioned. Everybody thought was was the precursor to a wave of violence that was going to strike. In fact it didn't happen.

Now having said that it shouldn't be discounted the fact that there was a lot of violence or a lot of registration officials were a number were killed. I think in this in the neighborhood of a dozen were killed in the during the summer and since the spring. There was there are a number of schools have been torched. There was a girl school about the same time that this car bomb happened there was a girls school where there was 12 girls were killed. So there is violence of different sorts and some of it targeted against the election process some of it targeted other symbols of government. Power government authority so that I think it is remarkable and I'm in something of a mystery that it didn't happen as planned in regard to the election. I think it's partially a sign that there were the International Security Assistance Force did a good job there. I get security alerts from the

non-governmental organization security office in Kabul and a number of times in the in the prelude to the election there were indications that they had found they had captured they had stopped suspected people with explosives in their in their vehicles. So I think that there was good work done by the security people. But I don't think that entirely explains it because they didn't have much reach outside of Kabul itself that the Taliban decided that it would be unpopular to target the election. I don't know I don't think anybody really has a clear bead on that one yet. We have some of the callers here we'll get to them in the order. So next up the champagne county line one. Hello. Hi. Your comment on DynCorp makes provokes me to ask a question about that I mean what sort of complaints that they have because they're all over the place. There are there and obviously there in Iraq there in Colombia there and Kosovo and and in the Balkans where they actually want a couple of them are

actually being sued for trafficking in women or something like that some of the operatives of of DynCorp it's really shady outfit it seems to me in the SO and I guess there's more security contractors in Iraq than than and than the people from Syria as well as illustrated the other day. But. But I just wonder how many of the people there but I actually wanted to call and ask about the Human Rights Watch report. I wonder if you're familiar with that maybe you've contributed to it because it was released in September. There's very little comment on it. I've been searching through the New York Times periodically and. Looking up Human Rights Watch and there is no far as I can tell there is no particular reference to Human Rights Watch report on Afghanistan there. It's called the rule of the gun. Human rights abuses political repression in the run up to Afghanistan's presidential election and it goes into some great detail about not just the Taliban but I mean violence is one thing intimidation is the use of violence without actually blowing any bombs up and I don't know the warlords drug

lords. I don't know why you have a particular. I mean obviously it ropes a lot of people into into a narrow category but you know you have to be able to generalize in some ways and not all warlords or drug lords but a lot of them are and they're the people that I think that were intimidating and and commissioning people to register more than one several times etc. etc. I just. And for their own from their own point of view they can justify cause they see Karzai being flown around with Blackhawk helicopters by the US which is a rather big in kind donation I would guess. So I would like for you to react to some of those points OK. On the on the last point about warlords. The reason I have trouble with it is I think that it wipes the whole category of people with one brush and I think there are different reasons why some of these regional commanders have power. They the central government has not been a reliable player has not been a reliable

authority over the last 30 years. And so there have become regional alliances and some of some of those people are drug lords and warlords and human rights abusers as you as you indicate that's absolute you and I don't want to try to. My point is not to whitewash that is simply to say that I think sometimes you need to make fine distinctions between wives in power as opposed to another and when you call them warlords becomes difficult to make those. Sense of distinctions. That's the point on that regard to DynCorp fact I heard this morning on NPR the DynCorp is also one of the organizations one of them the military contractors who are traditional military contractors who's also trying to bid for some of the funds associated with the eradication of AIDS which is something of a scary thought if you've seen giant Corps operating in Kabul and other places. I think the problem is that they are for one thing they're giving the American government a

bad name the American people a bad name. Afghans are not always able to distinguish between military and these private contractors because they seem to have similar authority even though they don't dress the same. The military I think in Afghanistan there have been mistakes made there been casualties that are a result of miscalculations or bad intelligence by the military. But the military by and large conducts themselves with professionalism and they also have a code of conduct that that controls their their behavior the DynCorp people all of them are come. Cross of cowboys and they I've been in restaurants where they they come in they've been there they have their weapons you know often a you know a pistol and big automatic weapon they have their oakley sunglasses. They they conduct themselves like I mean it's the closest analogy I can I can make is the Wild West who are these cowboys come in from from the range and they don't have any any concept of Afghan culture or the importance

of trying to show respect to the people in that culture Afghans are very very sensitive about the role of outside outsiders in their country. And if you become seen as as an invader that's the kiss of death and I think that also is one of the problems that Karzai is surrounded by these people. And some people are beginning to think of Karzai as a puppet of the American government. And if you look at Afghan history the period of people going back to the 19th century in the 18th 30s and 40s. Was installed in the throne of Kabul by the British government and he never was able to gain legitimacy for himself because he was considered to be a British puppet. Same thing with Bob Rudd Kamaal the government the person who was installed after the Soviet invasion in 1979 under undercut his credibility with the Afghan people and he never was able to really get traction. I think that danger exists for Karzai as well along the same lines

as far as being a puppet we have his Viceroy Collins. I guess he was a coworker with in the past in various various corporate ensured and governmental interests to its right. Now the idea that he's going around and and doing being political fixer to discourage people from running offering them some kind of position in the new government et cetera et cetera I mean I just I don't know why people can take it seriously. To me it is a it's clearly a puppet government and. The enthusiasm. Consequently to me is that by the Afghan people it's pretty sad. But I feel pretty sad about it because I think they were there hoping against hope and they don't have much else. That's right but I think you have to look at it from their point of view as a. There's no doubt that he is that the person

who's pulling the strings is the investor and it's in true we might want to discuss this in a second but the it's interesting that the ambassador the U.S. ambassador in Kabul is a is a native born Afghan speaks the native languages and knows all the personalities and is able to interact with them in a way that no other U.S. ambassador to my knowledge has ever behaved. And so he's not even of he's called frequently referred to as a viceroy along the British lines but in fact he's something even more interesting than that because he is he is an inside player and and he's been using his power in ways that I think are so blatant that they have unintentionally served to undermine Karzai's power. But again back to my main point and that is that from the point of view of Afghans for all of Karzai's faults he's first of all he is not a Saddam Hussein he's not a he's not a despot. If anything he's his problem is that he's ineffectual that he's not decisive but he

is also not somebody himself who has been accused of human rights abuses or of political crimes. And given the history of that country however limited his of the power is and however limited his effectiveness he is there is a. Stability A calm in Afghanistan that didn't exist before and I think that people appreciate that and they want to build on that. So I think the enthusiasm is for a process it may be and there may be a pathetic quality to it I hope against reason quality to it but it shouldn't be discounted that they need to hold on to something and for them look at the alternative if this election process as illegitimate as it might be by Western standards if it fails what are the consequences. And I think that's what Afghans are worried about. We have some of the callers who are moving into our last 15 minutes here on focus in this first hour. Our guest David Edwards he's a professor of anthropology at Williams College. We're talking about Afghanistan.

3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. The next callers are Arie here in Urbana. Next is line number two. Well you know look yes I cannot see any reason to disagree with printed word or word. People who call it is a good picture of Afghanistan but sometimes Ronald Reagan said you just have to hold your noise in this case disconnect that things are bad in the process corrupt Constitution is corrupt. Maynes you know that you know Embassador enough going to St.. And what causes AIDS it. Press TV to be a decent person. However for the third world knows of cornerstone is to know if the US

leaves very very soon is going to degenerate into it. Politics in and become a sort of mix you could call it any democracy. You know what. What I think the US has to do is to be patient and see if the destructor if you take that to mean if it takes root almost completely you know what kind of impress is there in fact by the Afghan people and courage that I guess all all on it's in you know they win in mass in voted in so far the new you know the mission I pointed committee of to redo a Canadian I saluted I think of it 40 ballot boxes to risk probably no more than fifty thousand votes that they're going to look at it

and they're permitted counting You know Paul and I didn't vote too soon so I'm very very hopeful. What I'm not to quite confidence in the U.S. do that determination to stay in seat in this democracy takes root in one short commentary when Holland and I swear when of course God the revenue. But there was not really a government in that revenue too because the government of Corzine was so small and it wasn't really just in the US. The skit was corrupt and is corrupt for the money that you got from the customs and put them in the sun you don't in fact quite a lot of it not all of it from leaving quite a lot of it was used to do one up it ought not to do it. Don't fall from the sun that energy scoop in through their

curiosity and we got to sit in there with peace and to see if I'm going to get 100 Union was going to do it on Moon knowing I didn't do that and it happened just recently as 100 watts in a suit. Thank you Dr. Ludwig for coming. Thanks for the call I wonder bread preserved words with what you think about the point that the caller makes particularly about the question he raises about the long term commitment of the United States. To Afghanistan. Well that's a that's one thing that Afghans in general worry tremendously about I think there is an assumption that America is not going to stay the course and they look to history to for evidence of that after the Soviets pulled out in 1909. We had supported the resistance parties we had basically now we arm them we financed them we created them the people who had not existed before were really put into positions of power by with American money.

And when the Soviets left we lost interest and that's when the Afghans say why did that did everything dissolve. It was partially because the people who had the outside brokers who had played a role in the early days failed to live up to their responsibilities in the post-Soviet period. And I think the same thing is feared now that when the election is over the American election when there's less reason particularly now with the fat of massive commitment of troops in Iraq that there's worry that we're going to we're going to cut. Ron and I think that in fact we even Varun the from the very beginning from December 2001 when when bin Laden was in in Tora Bora we decided to not use American troops we decided to save those troops and to depend on Afghan proxies. And I think that set the pattern from that point on that our attention really was to it was toward gearing up for Iraq and Afghanistan from the point of view of the administration's always been a sideshow.

And I think it's a shame because Afghanistan offered an opportunity for a real victory not only a victory against the Taliban and al-Qaida a victory that's been elusive so far but a victory for for America and its relationship with a Middle East country. There was probably probably no Muslim country in the world that was as receptive and as ready to work with America. And I think if we had stayed engaged in Afghanistan in a way we have not. We could now the Bush administration could now point to Afghanistan as a real victory as a as a solid foundation economically politically for for for a stable civil society. And now there they're saying that the rhetoric is there but the reality is that we have not engaged. We have not put the money in that we promised nor have other donor countries as well. The promises made in the enthusiasm of early 2002 faded. Other

commitments came along and we forgot about Afghanistan and I think we let a major victory slip out of her grasp. Let's go again to another caller. This is someone also in Urbana 1:3. Hello. Hi we have family who were Iscar volunteers in Afghanistan in the 60s mid 60s and continue to be keeping in touch with Afghans that they're able to and including emigres who would like to go back and they themselves are prone to hearing to help with writing some new legal code for the environment for Afghanistan. We were with them this weekend and I had. An interesting comment to make. One of which was that Afghanistan used to have a major amp export to India. Raisins and nuts and they've lost it now because now India

imports from California and Afghanistan can't meet California's prices on these things which I thought was kind of a sad twist. Good for California former It's terrible for Afghan farmers and they were also saying that essentially the major two major industries in Afghanistan it seems one is building because a lot of people are trying to move into the cities where it's safer and people are coming back to the country. And but the other one is drugs. The drugs are just so much. Money and racing heroin I presume that's what it is that it leads to corruption and it's really really difficult for anybody to make headway including the people who are have good intentions and want to see good things happen to the country. It's really really hard for them to make any headway with

the previous amount of corruption as a result of the drug. Yeah let me make a comment about the Peace Corps first and then talk about drugs but I think it's one of the things that I find sad now is that the kind of ways in which the multiple ways that America was able to engage with the rest of the world that during the Cold War period are not happening now. You don't find Peace Corps you don't even find the foreign service officer stationed in Kabul able to leave their embassy. The they live in. You have to get into the embassy. It's a little like the Green Zone a small version of the Green Zone in Baghdad. You have to go through multiple layers of security and you finally get inside and you find all of them the personnel living in containers on the grounds of the embassy. And it's of like Fort Apache a modern version of Fort Apache and there's they're totally cut off from Afghans. The people that. Supposed to be helping and trying to understand. The only people who are really able to

engage Afghans these days or who are willing to are those are the military officers. They're up there in the villages and working in the ministries. They're the real operators the Foreign Service and other civilian sides of American involvement in Afghanistan I think it's true of other countries as well but the civilian side is gone and I think it's a sad thing and it's the something that we need to be thinking about in terms of how we present ourselves and what our role is in the rest of the world. She also had an interesting comment back in August when she said that for her as somebody who had lived in Afghanistan I think she was talking about images of Iraq kind of well I've often thought of Afghanistan in some respects. I think there's a militant. She said that one of the most disturbing images that she has moved practically to tears about this. That last thing our army go in and bash down doors of residences and drag people out including the women.

And she says and I remember thinking these and that but I wasn't. I do. Understand and he said so at the time I didn't understand what this would mean to somebody who was living in those cultures use of the sense of privacy in that you don't go into somebody's home and you don't deal with some of the women in the family are deeply. It's deeply insulting and shows a total lack of understanding and respect for somebody else's culture. And I was thinking too about again this goes over to Iraq. I don't I don't condone all the taking of hostages and having off their heads in order to get women released. But I think that we in our treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib. You pronounce it. I would be worried if I were in that culture I'd be worried about how our army was treating the women if they're treating men like this.

Given everything else one knows about how women have been treated in other cultures you know that when we're right we seem to have set ourselves up for major misunderstandings and for creating more enemies than we're killing. That's right and I think that it stems from a pervasive fear that we're really the people in station and Afghanistan a lot of these the troops I feel for them in a way because they're in a position where they they have no access to the culture they don't really know what they're dealing with. And all the stories that they've been told lead them to suspect that everybody is a Taliban everybody is an enemy and so they they behave accordingly. In the end the results are as you say devastating. Imagine part of its Afghan culture and their their very strong sense of privacy and the separation of the private domestic sphere from the public sphere. But it's also human nature to them in any of us would have that response if we if the door

of a military force from another country came in and knocked on our front door and and started searching us. And that's that's something that we can all relate to. We're going to have to stop it because we're here at the end of the time apologies we have a couple of people we can't take we'll simply have to leave it there but I'm sure that in future we'll be talking about Afghanistan again so you can look forward to that. Again I want to thank our guest David Edwards. He's professor of anthropology at Williams College Williamstown Massachusetts and Professor Edwards thank you very much for talking you did it.