[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 14765-14766]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  CONTINUING CHALLENGES IN AFGHANISTAN

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, although our attention today is focused on 
the persistent attacks against U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq and the 
escalation of the bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians, it is 
imperative that we not ignore the challenges we continue to face in 
Afghanistan.
  In southeast Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers continue to battle with the 
remnants of al-Qaida and the Taliban, whose fighters have managed to 
regroup across the border inside Pakistan. Despite hundreds of millions 
of dollars in U.S. aid, the national impact has been difficult for many 
Afghans to see. Afghanistan is such a large, inaccessible, impoverished 
country that it will take many billions of dollars over many years to 
recover from decades of war, and that will be possible only if adequate 
security exists to implement these programs. Security will remain 
elusive as long as political and economic power outside of Kabul 
continues to be wielded by regional warlords.
  An article by Carlotta Gall in yesterday's New York Times provides a 
sobering description of the continuing challenges in Afghanistan. I 
hope officials at USAID, the State Department, the Defense Department, 
and OMB took the time to read it. As with so many aid programs, we 
often focus on the trees and lose sight of the forest. We can point to 
lots of small success stories--new well dug here, a bridge repaired 
there, more girls enrolled in school. But when you step back the 
picture looks very different, as Ms. Gall's article shows.
  We and our Allies have major stakes in Afghanistan's future, and I am 
confident that we will remain engaged. But let's do the job that needs 
to be done, not half measures. Without a more effective strategy to 
enhance security, strengthen the central government and support civil 
society, we will fall far short of our goals.
  I ask unanimous consent that Ms. Gall's June 11, 2003, article in the 
New York Times entitled ``In Warlord Land, Democracy Tries Baby Steps'' 
be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              In Warlord Land, Democracy Tries Baby Steps

       KABUL, Afghanistan, June 10.--In the hushed, rose-filled 
     gardens of the royal palace in Kabul, life seems calm and 
     good. Under the chandeliers of the meeting hall upstairs, 
     President Hamid Karzai, just back from a trip to Britain and 
     a meeting with the queen, manages to combine an expression of 
     condolence for German peacekeepers killed in a suicide bomb 
     attack in the capital Saturday with an upbeat assessment of 
     the situation in his country.
       The heavily armed American bodyguards who stand in the 
     gardens and by the windows of the palace have become like the 
     wallpaper, so much are they part of the scene now. The 
     Taliban threat in the south and southeast, the car bomber who 
     drove this week right into the city, the persistent factional 
     fighting in the north of the country, all seem far away.
       But in the last few months there has been a crisis of 
     confidence in Afghanistan, a sense that the security 
     situation may be spiraling downward and that the rise of 
     regional warlords may be more than a temporary phenomenon. 
     Attacks on peacekeepers and aid workers are increasing. After 
     more than a year of waiting patiently for results, people 
     here are increasingly asking: are the Americans getting it 
     right?
       Today, as American forces in Iraq struggle to establish 
     order, as one or two American soldiers seem to fall every 
     day, it seems likely to be a question the United States will 
     soon face in Iraq as well.

[[Page 14766]]

       Even the most pessimistic Afghanistan watchers acknowledge 
     that this time is different from the sliding chaos of the 
     early 1990's. The Americans are not going to turn their back 
     on Afghanistan the way they did then, and the way they did in 
     Iraq after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. The Americans are 
     here and, by all accounts and appearances, here to stay.
       But there is only a year left for Mr. Karzai and his 
     American backers to get things right before his term is up. 
     The Bonn process, which set up the interim administration led 
     by Mr. Karzai, lays out a rapid program for a new 
     constitution to be drawn up and approved by a grand assembly 
     this October, and for national elections to be held next 
     June.
       For Afghanistan, one key to establishing order is the 
     disarmament of the factional armies around the country. The 
     United Nations and Afghanistan's new Human Rights Commission 
     have already stressed that if the much delayed disarmament 
     and demobilization program does not go ahead, the drafting of 
     the constitution and national elections could be thrown into 
     jeopardy.
       ``There is a real, but still avoidable, risk that the Bonn 
     process will stall if security is not extended to the 
     regions, and that Afghans will lose confidence in the central 
     government if it cannot protect them,'' the United Nations 
     special representative to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, told 
     the Security Council in New York last month.
       Another difficulty is that the allies are tackling the 
     problems in piecemeal fashion, a strategy that will only 
     advance the country by tiny steps, critics say.
       United States diplomats and aid officials like to draw 
     attention to a large wall map in their embassy that is 
     covered in a ``blizzard'' of yellow Post-it stickers marking 
     every single project under way in the country. They trumpet 
     the provincial reconstruction teams, United States military-
     civil affairs teams that are trying to win hearts and minds 
     in the provinces by building schools, or latrines for 
     schools. And they talk of the program to train the Afghan 
     National Army, which should produce a 9,000-member force by 
     next year.
       But the national impact of all of this is virtually nil. As 
     one director of a donor agency, which completed 160 
     construction projects last year, said, ``The dimension of the 
     destruction is such that people don't see it.''
       Compared with the enormous military-political Gordian knot 
     that needs to be cut, the attention to human needs can only 
     be described as paltry, even irrelevant.
       Little has been done to disarm and dismantle the power 
     bases of the factions, and as time goes on the armed men who 
     rule the districts, regions and whole provinces are becoming 
     more and more entrenched and increasingly powerful 
     economically. They are likely to dominate politics during the 
     next year, which could fatally erode all public trust in the 
     process and the results. The country could end up being ruled 
     by a mixture of drug lords and fundamentalist mujahedeen--in 
     other words, people not much different from the Taliban.
       Everyone has a different idea of what the United States 
     should be doing, but most Afghans and Westerners working here 
     agree that there are two basic requirements for nation-
     building that the United States cannot afford to ignore--
     providing security and establishing a functioning political 
     system. They are interconnected, most here agree; in fact, it 
     is impossible to have one without the other.
       Only a legitimate, national political system will have the 
     authority to establish a police and justice system with the 
     necessary powers to establish real security. Without real 
     security, there can be no widespread development; American 
     soldiers cannot stand on every street corner, or monitor 
     every business transaction and tax collection.
       The problem here, as in Iraq, is that the American military 
     is still running the show and views Afghanistan through the 
     prism of the campaign against terrorism and not according to 
     the country's political and economic demands. But if 
     Afghanistan is to seize the chance this year to start 
     becoming a stable and prosperous society, there is much, much 
     more to be done.
       Many are saying that Washington needs to exert more 
     political pressure--on Mr. Karzai to act more decisively on 
     this government to work more proactively, on the police 
     nationwide to ensure law and order, on commanders to disarm, 
     on ministers to reform their ministries and even out the 
     balance of power, on warlords to give up their fiefs and join 
     the government, on Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban 
     and other opponents of the Bonn process. The list goes on.
       All those steps would be a help. But fundamentally, the 
     Americans need to create an atmosphere in which democratic 
     politics can take hold. That means doing more than attending 
     to human needs and offering military training. It means, in 
     the view of many Western officials here and prominent 
     Afghans, putting pressure on the warlords, disarming them and 
     cutting their power bases, leveling the political playing 
     field so that the coming elections are free and fair.

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