Interview with Barnett Rubin

Barnett Rubin is the well-known author of several books on Afghanistan. A leading international expert on security, he is the Director of Studies at New York University's centre for international cooperation. He is the former director of the centre for preventive action at the Council for Foreign Relations. In an interview with IRIN on the eve of a regional conference in Turkey this month, he predicted that the outcome of the Loya Jirga, or grand council, would make most Afghan political factions unhappy, because their expectations were incompatible. However, they would not opt for war to settle scores, he maintained. QUESTION: You have recently been to Afghanistan. How do you see the transformation post-11 September? ANSWER: The difference I see, not just from the Taliban times, but for the last 24 years, is that people have more hope in the future than they did any time before that. In some areas, the transformation from Taliban rule to warlord rule has been a little more ambiguous. I know that some democratic activists in [the western city of] Herat saw it somewhat safer under the Taliban, because then everything was forbidden, and they did everything in secret. Now, supposedly, it is permitted, so they do it openly, and as a result they are persecuted. It is now more unpredictable and dangerous. People are hopeful that their country will be reconstructed, but so far most of the aid has not arrived. Also, people in Afghanistan feel that they are protected to some extent from interference by their neighbours due to the American presence. They wonder if they can count on that presence for the future. Q: Do you anticipate that the Loya Jirga process will achieve broadly acceptable, tangible results? A: It's always difficult to predict what the Loya Jirga will do. That can become a very emotional event as people are coming to it with more expectations. The major political factions in the country are trying to reach some kind of a consensus before the Loya Jirga so that they can present a unified proposal on the shape of the new government. The [former] king [Mohammad Zahir Shah] is trying, to some extent, to reassure his supporters, especially among Pashtuns. I think that the outcome will be one that will probably make most major groups somewhat unhappy, because their expectations are incompatible. But it will not make any group unhappy enough that they will resort to war. Q: Despite the initial huge pledges by the international community, funds do not appear to be there - what are the implications? A: It's very disturbing, both because on the one hand the pledges are not being fulfilled [and] second because it seems that the governments continue to be more interested in supporting popular-looking type projects, while not paying for more necessary things like the current expenditures of the government or backing for the currency, which is needed. In addition, the major donors have not been able to put much resources into providing additional security by expanding the International Security and Assistance Force as the government and the UN requested. So it is potentially very troubling. Actually, the international community does not understand what is needed for Afghanistan, and each country is still acting independently in its own interests - according to its own bureaucratic and political procedures. Processes are under way to try and create a more consolidated approach... So I think that the next six months will really be the test if they come through on those pledges or not. Q: What do you think is the American role in Afghan reconstruction? A: George Bush was elected saying that he was against nation-building. But in a speech that he gave on 28 March, he specifically said that they would engage in nation-building in Afghanistan and that they would support a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan. The US Congress is even stronger on that. The administration asked the congress to allocate US $250 million for Afghan reconstruction for the next year. The congress instead has passed a bill that allocates $250 million a year for the next four years. So there is a billion dollars for Afghan reconstruction, showing more long-term commitment. It also requires the government to present the congress within 45 days with a plan for security in Afghanistan. The problem is with our government pursuing different goals in Afghanistan. The top priority, which is the mandate of the Defence Department and the CIA to carry out, is to search for the remnants of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and crush them to ensure that they cannot carry out any more attacks against the United States. The second is to try and support the development of new institutions in Afghanistan through the Bonn agreement and the process that is growing out of it. Unfortunately, sometimes these two policies are in conflict with each other, in particular when the military or the CIA pays Afghan militias belonging to independent warlords to fight Taliban or Al-Qaeda, thereby creating opponents or competitors to the administration in Kabul. Q: What are the regional dimensions of Afghanistan's reconstruction? A: Originally, the conflict was sustained by the competition of the US and the Soviet Union. After the withdrawal of the Soviet Union, it was sustained by competition of the regional powers, Pakistan and Iran, and in particular with Pakistan's regional ambitions with respect to India and its desire for a stable border. Now for Afghanistan to have any kind of stable economy and economic growth, it has to be economically interlinked to the region. Because it’s a landlocked country, it depends for its water supply on the surrounding region. In the course of the war, Afghanistan has changed from a largely subsistence economy to being a largely cash economy. The economy has commercialised, forcing the farmers to produce the cash crops, and they had to find markets in the surrounding countries. In addition, the Afghans themselves are spread throughout the region. They have capital, they move back and forth, migrate, they control the transport and trading networks in the region. Also, governance has been undermined by problems of smuggling and criminalised economy. In order to diminish that, Afghanistan and the surrounding countries will have to reach agreements on customs practices, and have to bring together their tariffs more into line with each other to reduce the incentives for smuggling. There are some specific regions, such as the Pashtun tribal belt, which is an area of very high-degree poverty, very low level of education, low level of opportunity on both sides of the border, which leads these people to emigrate, to involve [themselves] in the drug trade and smuggling, and also makes them more vulnerable to recruitment by the extremist organisations such as the Taliban or others. So, some kind of cross-border development process for those regions is necessary. This will benefit Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as the broader region. Q: What is your assessment of the UN's role to date in Afghanistan? A: The UN has presided over the Bonn process. When things have worked, they have worked because of the partnership that evolved between the US, the UN and the coalition. When things haven't worked, it's when the UN and the US and the coalition have diverged - as on the security issue for instance. [UN] Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi has done an extraordinary job with his personal political skills and few resources. If you consider what the UN has done in collaboration with the commission on the Loya Jirga, with all the problems in that process, with few resources to bring that off, in just six months, it's a remarkable achievement. You still have a lot of competition between various UN agencies. Brahimi has been trying to reduce that. There is still more UN staff than perhaps is needed. The UN under Brahimi's leadership is making a big effort to hire much more local, or national, staff than in other operations. The most difficult challenge is integrating the political and economic types of the operation. That's very difficult for the UN, because on both sides the major powers and the major donors still control the levers, and the UN can at best influence them. Q: Do you see any real shift in Pakistan's and Iran's foreign policies towards Afghanistan? A: There is obviously a much greater shift in Pakistan's policy towards Afghanistan. It's a complete reversal, at least overtly. Both have modified their policies because of the US presence and pressure. Whether this change is permanent depends on how long the US will stay, and what it leaves behind. Now with the US there, that means that Pakistan can be sure that Iran will not have excessive influence there. If the US is behind a stable Afghan government that has a balanced policy towards its neighbours and is able to effectively control the territory, then Pakistan and Iran will find it in their interest to engage in economic cooperation, regional integration and support for the Afghan government. But if the US withdraws and Afghanistan collapses again, or there is a conflict within Afghanistan, then all those surrounding powers have kept networks of people, ties and so on. The key to stability in the region is the construction of a more stable state in Afghanistan, which will be integrated into the region. Q: Security is one of the major issues. What kind of solution you would like to see to that problem? A: I don't think there is a solution in the sense that you can do something very quickly to resolve that problem. It's been such a long time during which the legitimate institutions have dissolved and people are used to rule through the gun. If you look at Tajikistan, which had a much shorter period of war, it took several years to come to that. The basic problem is on the one hand the demobilisation and disarmament of many of those people and, on the other hand, construction of a more effective provincial administration. Q: With the recent protests in Kyrgyzstan forcing the government there to resign, what chances do you see for democracy to flourish in Central Asia? A: Kyrgyzstan has been more open than the others, but despite that fact it has oppression of the press and a lot of corruption. Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in different ways have very personalistic rulers. Tajikistan has suffered from the fragmentation of power. In Kazakhstan, there is a tremendous level of corruption in the government. It's hard to see how it can become democratic. In Uzbekistan, I don't know what will happen after [President Islam] Karimov loses office one way or the other. Still, he has maintained tight control by using the revenues from gas, oil, cotton and gold. The prospects are poor in the short run, but civil society has become more assertive, which is good in the long term. Q: What are the major problems in Central Asia, and how should the international community address them? A: It's good that there is more international engagement in Central Asia because of the war in Afghanistan. There is more international presence there, even if it's a military presence. That should not be translated into support for the existing regimes. There should be contact with the local societies and try to open these societies to the outside world. In addition, the governments justify a lot of their repressive measures on the basis of the threats coming out of Afghanistan, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and so on. Now that threat has been reduced and eliminated. It's important for the government of Uzbekistan to relax some of its harsh budget control measures, which have inhibited the development of cross-border trade, movement of people, and enhance the economic cooperation in the region. The futures of landlocked Central Asia lie in economic cooperation. The independent states have to integrate without forming the Soviet Union again, and their governments have to become more open. However, they are not willing to open, because they are willing to protect their own corruption. Q: How optimistic are you about Afghanistan? A: I am more optimistic than I have been any time for the last 20 years.