Part II of CQ's Interview with Ambassador Said Jawad of Afghanistan

Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters did a very informative interview with Ambassador Said Jawad of Afghanistan and aired it on his CQ Radio program as part of BlogTalkRadio.

Here is a transcript of the second half of the interview. The first part is here. I typed it up off the webcast, so any errors are mine.

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CQ: I know that other NATO nations, I believe Germany is involved in building the forces, they're doing the training. Is there a need for a bigger commitment than what you've seen thus far in recruiting people for the army, as well as training them, from Western nations such as the United States?

Ambassador Jawad: Germany started training the Afghan police force, but it was a more conventional approach of building a police academcy, and doing it slowly and systematically, the way it's done in Germany, but we really need to actually fill the gap and send many police officers to different parts of the country to fight against terrorists. It's not a traditional job of police officers like here to issue citations or something like that. It's a different approach. The United States is again taking the lead in training the police force. NATO overall is playing a very important role in Afghanistan in the fighting but also in the training, gradually, and also in equipping the Aghan national army, particularly countries like Canada, Britain, Australia are doing a very good job in Afghanistan.. Germany, many other countries, in fact 36 different countries have a military presence in Afghanistan, and 40 countries are contributing in the military operation in Afghanistan either directly or indirectly.

CQ: Do you feel that Afghanistan has been shortchanged in terms of support following the invasion and occupation of Iraq?

Ambassador Jawad: Afghanistan is shortchanged, that's for sure. I don't know if it was after the Iraq invasion, because after the Cold War when the Soviets were gone we were also shortchanged, there was no Iraq back then. There has been underinvestment in Afghanistan. I don't know how much of that relates to Iraq, but certainly you would have not been in this position that we are right now had we invested adequately in the past five years in Afghanistan.

CQ: I want to go back to the education system, because this is-- Between 9/11 and the point in time where we came to Afghanistan, there was certainly a lot of awareness of the Taliban's very dictatorial rule, especially in terms of educating women, girls, in Afghanistan, and a lot of the readers are concerned that that changes, obviously, and they're very interested to find out what the commitment is to educating Afghanistan's women, and where you're at with that, and where you hope to be.

Ambassador Jawad: One of the important achievements of the Afghan people and the Afghan government is to provide the equal opportunities for Afghan women through the constitution, which is one of the most liberal constitutions in the world. But, more importantly, through educational opportunities. Six million boys and girls are going to school today in Afghanistan, and 35% are girls. This is a very good investment for the future of Afghanistan. While the number of Afghan women participating in the political process, or going back to school-- as a matter of fact, 12% of the state employees in Afghanistan are women, which under the Taliban wasn't there. While the number is significant, the quality of education in Afghanistan both for boys and girls still suffers. A lot of the schools in Afghanistan are still under a tent or under a tree. The curriculum needs to be revised, but more importantly, in order to recruit better qualified teachers, we need to pay more. We are paying only $40 a month to a teacher, and with economic opportunities that exist in Afghanistan, in [inaudible] illicit economy, it's very hard to recruit qualified people to be a teacher by just offering them $40. Same thing is true about the police force. We are offering $70 a month to a police officer, and it's very hard to get a tough job of fighting Al Qaeda, narco trafficers, and warlords, and everyone else, and just getting paid $70 a month. So, it is very important for our partners in the international community to help us out, pay adequately the Afghan civil servants, the Afghan teachers, and the Afghan police officers.

CQ: In order to build the infrastructure, we should be assisting the pay structure, assisting in salaries, for these people so that we can attract them. Is teaching a dangerous job in Afghanistan? We've heard some stories of schools being targeted by Taliban remnants in Afghanistan.

Ambassador Jawad: It is. It is a courageous job. A lot of people who are doing it are committed and believe in what they're doing. As I mentioned, teachers are sometimes teaching a half day or full day under the hot sun or in a tent, and in the cold winter in Afghanistan. It is both a physically and mentally, economicially, but also security-wise a challenging job. If we continue the work that we have started, we should be able to once again have 40% of Afghan teachers to be women, the way it was before the Soviet invasion. 40% of all the teachers in Afghanistan were women.

CQ: And of course there are cultural issues that don't exist here in the United States for the most part, that people just choose not to send their daughters to school because of cultural and religious values, so when you get to a point where you have 35%, 40% of your student body being girls, that's a fairly significant achievement, I would think, in a very short period of time.

Ambassador Jawad: Absolutely. The impediment that exists right now is not so much cultural, it's security concerns. Like any other parent, if you have to send your little girls to travel three miles, possibly through mine fields, or with lack of roads and everything else. So our priority right now is to build more, smaller schools in Afghanistan, instead of bigger schools, to make sure that the distance between the home and the school is diminished, so the parents are more willing to send their little girls to school.

CQ: Are you concerned about the possibility of a coup in Pakistan by the same radical groups that created the Taliban? This is obviously something that is very close. Pakistan is your neighboring country and a lot of the people who cross the border back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan, they're very closely related to each other. Is that a concern for the Afghanistan government at this point in time?

Ambassador Jawad: Not so much. We think that the Pakistani army is a very strong and capable institution, and they will be able to control Pakistan for a long time. They are in full control of Pakistan. We have in the past raised the issue of how wise it is for the mlitary to support extremism. This is a separate issue, but I don't think that Pakistan is in danger of falling into the hands of the extremists. The extremists in Pakistan are a small minority. Despite the many changes that have taken place in Pakistan in the laws and others still they are not able to organize more than 9% of the votes in Pakistan. We think that if their political leadership in the civil society in Pakistan is strengthened, they will be able to fight the danger of extremism. What we need to focus on is to make sure that institutional support for extremism ends in Pakistan.

CQ: How do we end extremism in that area of the world? Certainly since 9/11 and even before that we were engaged in sort of a lower level conflict with radical extremists from that region. What needs to happen, what does the West need to do, what do Muslim nations need to do to end the threat of radicalism in that region, and are we on the right track at this point in time?

Ambassador Jawad: First, the leadership of Islamic countries, particularly the moderate clergy, the people who truly believe in the values of Islam, which is based on peace and understanding, should be a lot more outspoken about [inaudible]. Second, both the governments in these regions and our international partners should invest more in education, and in educational opportunities. This is the best way, the real way, of making sure that in the long run, children are not brainwashed. Many of the schools, certain of the madrassas for instance, in our part of the world, are teaching hatred. The reason parents are sending their young kids to some of these madrassas is economic opportunities that they have there. They're fed there, they're given clothes and everything, but over there instead of really getting acquainted with the real values of religion and humanity, they are turning into killing machines. So if we provide better opportunities for education, and also invest in the long run in civil society in this country, assist more-- as I mentioned the extremists are a small minority but they have a very strong voice right now. But the voice of civil society in moderation in most of these societies are not heard clearly. More support is needed for them.

CQ: You mentioned support for education. Who is supporting the madrassas that are operating now, that are, like you said, turning these people into killing machines? Where do you see that support coming from, and how do we push back against that?

Ambassador Jawad: Not all the madrassas are actually hate factories.

CQ: Just the specific ones that are causing the problem.

Ambassador Jawad: Sources are coming from a variety of inside and outside individuals and institutions. Some of them are small donations from individuals and others that we might not be able to get control of. But also some larger amount of the money is coming from the greater Gulf countries. With the price of oil being so high, there's a lot of excess money. It will be very beneficial for our friends, our partners in these countries to make sure this money will not make their into these institutions, these sources. Because, extremism and hatred is not a tool that you can control. We know from experience in the past that once these guys learn to hate humanity, they're not going to stop, they're not going to use it in a selective way, say against Americans or Europeans and others. They are equally dangerous for their own society.

CQ: The key to this, I think, is to build an economic structure in Afghanistan that supports an educational infrastructure that is independent of these types of personally funded madrassas and that sort of thing. What industries do you see in the future for Afghanistan? What do you think Afghanistan can excel in, in the global market?

Ambassador Jawad: Agribusiness. Afghanistan is some of the best producers of fruits in the world, and since we are facing the challenge of narcotics in Afghanistan, I think any kind of investment in agricultural business, packaging, and getting the Afghan agricultural products, basically fruits and nuts and others, to the international market, buying Afghan products such as rugs and others, but more important, in the long run we are working right now on acquiring investment in the areas of oil and gas. Copper, we have the second largest copper mine in the world. Minerals are a big opportunity in Afghanistan.

Overall, if we have a more stable region in that part of the world, the location of Afghanistan is an important asset. With the completion of the ring road in Afghanistan, the country could become a roundabout of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, connecting resourceful countries with a lot of energy and oil and gas to the north of Afghanistan. Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and many others, to the countries that need energy such as Pakistan and India down in the south.

CQ: A lot of people have talked about the issue of opium trade in Afghanista. You've referred to it a few times in this interview as the narco business. It's a major problem I know for your government, for governments around the world. Is there a way that the West could leverage that in order to keep the crops from entering illegal narcotics? I mean, opium is a basis for legitimate medicine as well as illegitimate drug use. Should there be some sort of effort to outbid the people who are trying to buy these crops, or steal these crops, for the narco business?

Ambassador Jawad: This is one of the proposals, actually, being submitted to the Afghan government, also discussed at the international level, either to buy the opium or legalize the trade. It is one option. I personally think it will be very difficult to implement in Afghanistan for the reason that right now, only 8% of the arable land in Afghanistan is cultivated with poppies. So if we start buying that, chances are many other people will go and cultivate poppies. And also I believe that we should not remove the moral and the ethical impediment of getting into substances that is basically killing Afghans, killing everyone else all over the world. Therefore, I think if we decide to buy crops, we should buy the legitimate crops in Afghanistan. We should buy, like the subsidized prices that are paid here in the US for some of the agricultural products. We should buy pomegranates, apples, or wheat and many other products in Afghanistan at a subsidized price, thereby providing an incentive for the farmers to grow legitimate crops.

CQ: I have to tell you, here in the United States, subsidized agriculture is quite a controversial issue. I think that in Afghanistan it would probably be-- I think people would understand the priority of getting other things fixed first, and the academic arguments about subsidizing agriculture can wait until later. It does sound like a pretty good plan. Is that something that you are working with countries like the United States, Canada, Britain, to build some subsidies into those agricultural efforts so you can keep people from growing poppies?

Ambassador Jawad: This is part of the plan that includes also making available loans to the Afghan farmers at a very soft term so that they don't have to acquire loans with interest rates that are sometimes more than 100% from the trafficers, and therefore being forced to grow poppies because they cannot repay with any other legitimate crop. This is part of it, but we also have to build the infrastructure of Afghanistan, especially the roads. Even if you convince a farmer to grow apples or pomegranate or something else, if there is no road to take it to the market, there is no cold storage facility, there is no market at all, it is difficult for him to do it in the long run. He might do it once or twice, but he will change his mind. So, fighting narcotics in Afghanistan or anywhere in the world is truly a matter of economic opportunities. If you look at the example of Turkey, they succeeded in eliminating opium in Turkey by development. If you emphasize only one aspect of the fight against narcotics such as eradication, like in Columbia for instance, then you will be in it for a long time. You have to fight narco trafficers, eradicate the poppy fields, build the institutions, provide for alternative livelihoods, and work closely with the countries that are either benefitting or are involved in the trafficing, in the processing and production of illicit drugs.

CQ: Ambassador Jawad, you said something here, and I just want to make sure that people understand it. A lot of people who are growing poppies are being forced to do so because of basically what we would call in this country loan sharking. They are being forced into a type of slavery in order to pay off the ever increasing interest on loans where the rate is 100% or more. Is that the main problem? Is that how the drug trafficers really lock in that poppy crop?

Ambassador Jawad: They come in the winter, when the farmer really doesn't have a source of money, they need the money. They will give them loans with a very high interest rate. But also as I mentioned, when a farmer grows opium, the crop is like cash. You can harvest that deadly crop and put it in a plastic bag and it will be sitting in a corner of a room for two or three months. It is not like grapes where you have to market it in a matter of a week, or turn it into juice or something, otherwise you will be losing the entire year. And especially if there is no agro-processing facilities, to turn for instance that grape into juice or a raisin or something else, then you'll be losing your entire harvest of the year. But, when you grow opium, and you harvest that, and you just put in a plastic bag and it will be sitting in a room without even needing a refrigerator or anything, and when you need to sell it, it's like a piece of a cake, you just cut a piece of it, it's almost cash. You go to the market and you sell it. So all these factors affect the mentality of the people who are growing poppy. And again, we have some of the best orchards, in Afghanistan, vineyards particulary in Kandahar, in the Shomali Plain, but when you have vineyards, you have to have a mindset of five to ten years. Some years you might make it well, some years it might not be so good, you should have to pass it to generations, to your son or family.

But when you grow poppy, all you need is three months. You grow it, you harvest it, and as I mentioned, you put in your pocket and you become a refugee again if needed. So we have to make sure that people are replanted in their home and in their village, like other plants. They grow their roots back into their home and village and they feel that yes, there is a future of five to ten years, and therefore I'm going back to rebuild the vineyards of my father or restore the orchards of my family.

CQ: I want to talk to you a little bit about the media. What does the media look like in Afghanistan? Is it a free media, do you have people who are investing in opening their own newspapers and radio? Is there enough investment in Afghanistan at this point in order to have that? I'm certainly not aware of what the state of the media is. I don't think that most of my readers are either.

Ambassador Jawad: I'm glad that you asked this question. Certainly the progress in Afghanistan, particularly in the area of the media, again thanks to the support and financial and technical assistance provided by many NGOs from all over the world, including Europeans and others. The accomplishments are tremendous. We have in Afghanistan today 17 privately owned TV stations. You can watch a number of Afghan TV stations as far away as Washington D.C., and all privately owned. We have only one state-run television in Kabul---

(the remaining five to seven minutes of the interview were cut off)