Dr. M. Ishaq Nadiri discusses the progress that has been made in Afghanistan in the last few years, the issue of terrorism, and the challenges that lie ahead.

Dr. Nadiri is a Professor of Economics at NYU and an economic advisor to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan and Canada's International Policy

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The First to Suffer from Terrorism	6 min 11 sec	Windows Media \| QuickTime
Development Strategy	4 min 01 sec	Windows Media \| QuickTime
A Complex Operation	4 min 36 sec	Windows Media \| QuickTime
Developing Capacity	5 min 19 sec	Windows Media \| QuickTime

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Transcript

The First to Suffer from Terrorism

I am Professor Nadiri. I am the senior economic advisor to the President and also the head of the JCMB (Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board), which is the joint board for following up on the Afghan Compact. I also head the development and operation of the ANDS (Afghanistan National Development Strategy). I am also involved in advising different ministries when they need advice. So my life is quite busy.

Afghanistan really emerged in 2001 as a destroyed society—not a country, a society. And one of the things that is important to emphasize is not only human capital and physical capital—things like that got destroyed—but Afghanistan is unique in terms of other developing countries in the sense that we lost our social capital. Social capital binds a country and binds the people. It is a product of a thousand years of learning and habits and so forth, so when that is lost...The depth of the destruction of Afghanistan, unfortunately, has not been fully understood, even by the Afghans themselves. So given the initial conditions, Afghanistan has made extraordinary progress in the short period of four or five years. For example, the country has established a governmental system; the country has sent six and a half million kids to school; and it built a ring road around the country—it used to take days to go from Kandahar to Kabul, and now it takes four or five hours.

Another remarkable accomplishment is that a great deal of the Afghans returned. We established contact with the world and we participate in the world. We held two elections—one was the election for the President and the other for the Parliament. They passed a constitution, which is a remarkable constitution. For example, it has mandated that 25 percent of the seats in the lower house have to be for women. Look at the social, political and economic context of that. This doesn’t even exist in the Western democracies. So there is a lively exercise going on, but then you have the situation of how do you connect the various dots—the social capital, physical capital and human capital—to move forward? At the same time, we have problems of insecurity arising from quarters that we can identify. But to cope with and do all this is a phenomenon which is extraordinary. The interesting thing is that this has been done in a spirit of camaraderie and cooperation with the international community. In fact, the fight of the Afghans right now is the fight of the international community. There is no distinction, because we have been the first and we still suffer from terrorism. That is the commonality. When Afghanistan gets weak, it becomes a place where things happen. Everything accumulates and then reaches the outside world. That phenomenon makes us bound together—it’s an international as well as a national message.

I can name many other projects and activities that have occurred. We have also developed a new strategy for Afghanistan, the Afghanistan Compact. It has become a model of development… I was asked if I could do the same for Iraq. But I said I have plenty to do.

The context of the strategy is important. It is important to recognize that it links security, good governance and economics together. In that sense it is different from any other strategies that have been developed. It is nice to recall that Canada is involved in all phases of that. We are grateful that they are there.

Development Strategy

The Compact and iANDS (interim Afghanistan National Development Strategy) are basically the two covers of the same book. It just happens that the Afghanistan Compact is the higher benchmark of the iANDS. It has 42 to 50 benchmarks. These benchmarks are a collection of three major forces and how they interact. One is in the area of security, another is reforms necessary for the government, and then the third one is a number of things which deal with in economic and social development.

The essence of these benchmarks of the iANDS is that this is an interactive system. You can’t start one and not worry about the other. So compartmentalization—that is the usual case—would not be a good idea because there are linkages. So you can’t do economics without security, and you can’t do security without economics.

The Compact is an agreement that was signed by Afghanistan and ratified at the London Conference. It’s a compact of understanding between the world and the Afghan government and consequently the Afghan people. The Afghans will undertake certain activities, and the international community will do certain things. For example, in the area of security, we would like to have a very efficient army and we have agreed on 70,000 soldiers for the army. But certain training and certain costs are associated with it. We will have institutional reforms in terms of selecting judges and so forth. Then we would like to develop advisory groups to find those people.

So it goes on. This set of benchmarks has to be completed in five years. They are time bound—some of them have to be done in six months, and some of them have to be done in a year. They are very, very specific things. It asks a lot of the Afghans to do, and hopefully we can do it.

The iANDS basically suggests certain priorities, at least in economics and many other things. The critical thing in Afghanistan right now is that we ought to concentrate on four or five things. One is energy, for example.

A Complex Operation

The issue of terrorism is a new experience for the world. Previously in the world we had standing armies for a variety of political and other reasons. There would be a fight, and one side would win and the other side would lose, and the problem would basically be resolved. Terrorism seeps like a cancer—it starts in one place and quickly reaches other places. In fact, if you look at the history, when Afghanistan was ignored and the germination of this took place, al Qaeda and many other groups resided in the body of the country, which was extremely weakened by all of these things. Then what happened? We saw 9/11 and all these other problems. If I may use the example of medicine, here is a place where you need to do the necessary operation. This is a complex operation. It takes time, but it is absolutely necessary. Just think, purely in economic terms, what the cost of security has been since 9/11. Every business has to hire people for security. The governments have to do the same, even institutions of culture and learning. Our whole lives have changed. If you calculate that cost, it is enormous. Somebody has to pay it. And the cost is not just monetary, it’s emotional, it’s psychological, it’s social, it’s political, and there are many other aspects. It has affected all of us. This fight is a fight for the world. It just so happens that the Afghans are the first victims.

The Canadians bring a great deal to this exercise. For example, they understand that the relationship between the military action and the economic footprint is very tight. In fact, General Hillier has spoken to me two or three times, and he has articulated this understanding. And that understanding is the essence of how you cure the problem of terrorism and insecurity. They have to both go simultaneously together—you can’t do one and not the other.

There is also another serious problem which affects everyone—maybe it doesn’t affect Canada a great deal—that of our farmers being in such a desperate situation that they have turned to the production of poppies. That problem comes to England, to Canada, to the United States and many other places. We need to go where the problems are and cure them. In talking to Canadians about their activities here, they have been very knowledgeable. Also the Canadians, as a nation of high standards, have always been involved in humanitarian activities such as demining, etc. So there are a combination of things that the Canadians have brought and I think that they are extremely competent. I wish them well.

Developing Capacity

There are quite a number of challenges. First of all, one of the serious challenges for us is to increase the Afghan government’s as well as the economy’s capacity. Capacity means not simply to have more experts coming and saying what to do and writing another report. What we want is to develop managerial talent. This has to be Afghans, because no matter what you do, you have to manage something—military, non-military, whatever aspects. So we need to entertain the issue of how we can attract very competent Afghans from abroad. There are plenty of them, and the Afghan immigrants have done well. I am sure that they have done well in Canada, and I know that in the United States at least they have done extremely well in terms of hard work and accomplishments. There are great scholars and doctors and so on. The key issue is that, if they can be attracted, they would be the ingredient of knowledge and capacity building. We have to go after them. Also, we have a fairly sizable number of young, highly educated Afghans that come out of the immigrant society in Pakistan and Iran that we can attract. We need people from all phases of life, from teaching to bridge building. That is our main challenge.

The second one is that we need to have plans and ideas on how to address the issue of unemployment. Capacity building usually takes time and it is usually futuristic. The problem of unemployment and poverty that we have is current and we have to address it—we can’t wait for the future to take of it. That is another major set of issues that we have.

The other issue is to change the role of Afghanistan in the region. Historically, Afghanistan was forced into being a buffer state. That ended up, by design, dividing the continent of Asia. Afghanistan is sitting right in the middle of Asia. In the north we have a huge amount of resources in terms of oil and gas—not in Afghanistan, but mainly in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and other places. And to our south we have a market of 1.2 billion people—in Pakistan and particularly India—which is rising by about 8 percent per annum. There is an emerging middle class of 300 million people in India. All of that is based on energy, and that energy cannot be brought from the north unless you go through Afghanistan. We are sitting right there. So we will become a facilitator of investment and trade in the area. We will prosper and they will prosper. This will change the historical role that has been there for some time. So we will have this regional and much more global nation, because the more energy that comes from this region, the more it will reduce the pressure on the energy market in the world as a whole. So oil prices may not jump up so much. It is a necessity—the time for this region to be coming out is now, and Afghanistan can play a critical role.