>> because the military role has stunted everything, including the civil administration, the bureaucracy over time, there is no superstructure to hold up the civilian rule, and it becomes only a segway to the next military rule. now, interestingly since 2008

the current army chief has publicly declared that he wants to keep the military out of politics. and i have to remind everyone that a previous army chiefs have said exactly the same thing. and then conditions change and the public, basically, clamors for some kind of order and stability, and in the name of order and stability, the military does quote-unquote its duty. so that possibility remains, but until now at least there has been a clear cut statement, and until now the position taken by the army chief where he has taken a kind of public backseat as it were and has not come out in the public with many views except on chosen occasions to a i chief certain specific -- achieve certain specific results. the constitutional arrangements also are worth remembering.

pakistan's 1973 constitution actually has a section dealing with the funks of the armed forces -- functions of the armed forces, and this is article 245. and under article 235 the civilian government, as do civilian goths all across the world, has the right to call in the military in aid of civil power. and when it does that, then article 245 refers to another article of the constitution which is article 199 which basically says that anything and everything that the military does cannot be challenged in the high court of the land. and so this is kind of a blanket immunity from all legal actions resulting from any action that the military would take many pursuit -- in pursuit of assisting civil power. now, periodically there has been

debate and discussion within pakistan on this issue. a very loud public debate ensued in the 1990s when the army chief was requested by the government of prime minister bhutto, benazir bhutto to mount an operation in the province. and he said that he would not t proceed until and unless he was given cover under article 245. and as a result that action was postponed, and then when the army did act, it acted on being requisitioned by the government. interestingly, the current situation is interesting because 245 has never been mentioned. it has not been mentioned by the newspapers, it's not been mentioned by the government, it's not been mentioned by the military.

however, in moving into the fight against the militancy especially in the northwest of pakistan the pakistan army sought and received a requisition from the provincial government. and this indicates to me a desire to allow the civilians to lead and to call the shots as far as the actual orders are given to the military to act. contrast that with the attempt at reaching some kind of a national consensus on the fight against militancy in pakistan today. you may recall that in the early days of this current government there was an attempt made to get a joint resolution of the parliament to fight terrorism inside pakistan. and it took a lot of cajoling and arm twisting, particularly on the part of the military authorities behind the scenes.

from all reports the isi played a role in convincing people that it was important for them to sign up to this even if they disagreed politically with the government of the day. and in the event all the parties managed to sort out their differences and they produced a joint resolution. but when the follow-up occurred, they basically ceded all powers to the army chief to decide on what to do and how to do it in the area in spite of the fact that martial law had not been declared in those, in the northwest frontier province nor in fatah at that time. so you had a kind of an interesting legal situation where the military was called in aid of civil war, also in aid of u.s. efforts in afghanistan, but there was no martial law declared, and the civilian government continued to muddle through on the side, sidelines

but did not have a controlling hand on the tiller. it was only much later and in the last few years that a kind of a troika emerged between the political representative of the president, the governor, the civilian government of the province which was led by the army national party and the co-commander in, based in par star rah where they have meetings of what they call the apex group regularly to try to sort out their plans and ideas and differences. but this is not something that was planned. this was something that emerged over time. and, indeed, the recent counterinsurgency or low-intensity conflict -- call it what you will -- operations show the widening gap between the civil and the military on decision making.

the military now has, in my view, a much wider stance on the policy of pakistan. traditionally it was understood, particularly after the period that the general was in power in pakistan, that the military had a very direct influence and control over certain aspects of policy. one was india/kashmir, the other was afghan policy because at that time pakistan was asiing in the war -- assisting in the war against the soviet occupation. the third emerged during the period which was nuclear policy and, eventually, control of nuclear assets. and then, of course, throughout pakistan's history the relationship with the united states because the united states has been a partner on and off of the pakistan military ever since the 1950s. so the army particularly being

the largest of the three military services has had a very powerful relationship with the united states and wants to continue to influence government policy on that relationship. that continues. so the army has that wide stance on these four sectors of policy. increasingly, though, from recent trips to pakistan my understanding is that now the army is also becoming extremely interested in economic management. and there are two very good reasons for that. one is the failure of the civilian administration to be able to muster the political support for very critical economic reforms that would sustain pakistan's economy on a stable development and growth path. their failure to come up with measures that would stick, and their failures to muster support even welcome back their own -- within their own party, let

alone bringing in parties to opposition, resolve the structural problems in pakistan's economy has created a situation which is going to put pakistan on the path of economic destruction if things are not changed in the near future. so the army now has started taking cognizance of this for the simple reason that the army will suffer if the economic power shrinks. the role of the army and its operations and its costs have increased, and it cannot function unless this is the support for it from within pakistan's own economy. it cannot rely entirely on foreign assistance, and given the debate going on in the united states i i think the days of unfettered u.s. military assistance or even the coalition support funds are likely to be numbered. secondly, the army itself is a

very major economic actor in pakistan. over time the military has, in order to support its own people as well as look after its retirees, has created a fairly large impression on pakistan's economic landscape. it is involved in different activities such as real estate, banking, even conflicts. and in addition the army has a very large military production complex which has been following a policy of import substitution. now, for those of us that have had encounters with economics, import substitution is normally followed by countries when they are worried that they will lose their ability to produce for their own selves because imports

will become prohibitive, or there will be sanctions imposed on them at some point which would prevent them from relying on foreign suppliers particularly for their military. so as a substitute for imports, you start producing things yourself. well, pakistan has over time been involved in import substitution on a fairly large scale. in order to be able to resist the pressures from overseas when it differs particularly with major suppliers. and there are some good reasons for pakistan to be paranoid about this because over time they have had a number of allies renege on promises of giving them technology. there was a famous case during president bhutto's days of france pulling the plug on the transfer of nuclear technology under pressure from the u.s. and other western powers.

so that kind of narrative runs deep in pakistan's memory. and as a result they have a very expensive import substitution defense sector, and that is going to add to their costs. just one example given by a former head of the war ordinance factories will give you an indication of how these costs can be enormous. he told me that one washer for the g3 which is the standard rifle used by the pakistan army costs five rue byes to import from malaysia, and yet it costs 25 rubies to support in pakistan. but because they want to be autocratic, they produce it domestically. i don't think all the others are of this nature, five times the cost, but these are all enormous costs. and if economy starts to tank, the government as well as

foreign assistance will not be able to sustain the military at its current level, nor be able to support its wider activities throughout the country. so the question was raised, what is the relationship? who controls the security apparatus? at the moment it's the military that controls the security apparatus, and even the ministry of defense has been ceded to the military because the secretary of the ministry of defense is a retired general. many retired officers populate the ministry of defense. this was, in some ways, a surrender by the civilian authorities to the military at the very outset of civilian rule. and they, basically, lost the high ground where they could actually try to reestablish civilian supremacy and failed to do so. despite the fact that general kayani had actually asked all the officers that had been

inducted into civilian government positions by president musharraf to either resign or return to the military. now, what to expect for the future. i think for the near term, and for the near term i mean the next three to five years perhaps, there will be increasing military influence. and that is because of the conditions inside the country, the economy is not going to be improving very rapidly very soon. the political system is in a kind of stalemate. there will be elections in a couple of years, maybe sooner. it's not likely, the election is not likely to produce a very powerful civilian government with a strong mandate, so the strongest political/economic institution in the country will remain the military in pakistan. but i also see much less penetration of the military in the civilian administration --

civil administration given the current policies of the current army chief who now has another three years in his tenure. and if that continues, i think it offers a great opportunity for the civilian establishment whether it's this government or its successor to start to take back some of those responsibilities. something that my conversations with senior military people indicate the military would favor. they are almost dying for somebody to step up and take responsibility so that they can go back to being soldiers. that is the normal tendency of most militaries. however, if nobody steps up to the plate, then we will continue to see a very powerful military influence, and we will continue to be discussing this five years from now. thank you. >> thank you very much.

[inaudible] >> thank you very much. it's a great pleasure and an honor to be here. be i'm asked this very basic question, who controls pakistan's security forces, my short answer will be i don't know exactly who, but there are so many forces and perhaps everyone wants to control them internally, and i would argue, also, externally. there are many assumptions at work. when we talk about security forces, especially in reference to pakistan, our first idea that comes to our mind is pakistan military, the armed forces, the history of military coups. we know how much pakistan ministry and intelligence has on decision making process. but often in this analysis we fail or we forget about, by and

large, the international norms. just look at, about the inference of the department of defense in the united states. think about the influence in terms of their impact, their feedback and their reactions to what the defense policy should be. yes, the big issue is who was the final read, and in any democracy, of course, it should be a civilian leadership. but i just want to also right in the beginning challenge some of the very basic perceptions and assumptions that we have that by, by definition, by some structural reasons that pakistan's security forces including police and law enforcement infrastructure and the military are, lies outside the control of the pakistan's mainstream political process. in my assessment that is not true. how and why i'll go into some

details in the next about 10-15 minutes. first, i think -- and as a focus of this panel is on some of the structural governance issues. i think there's absolutely no tout that there are -- doubt that there are serious structural flaws in pakistan's infrastructure. there are constitutional he kind thats, there are legal complexities as well. when we come to discuss who controls pakistan's security forces. and it will be good at this point to just very briefly define, also, what do we mean by security forces. i think in pakistan's context there are three institutions that we are talking about. one is pakistan's civilian law enforcement infrastructure. by that we mean police, by that we mean rangers which is deployed in karachi which by that we mean federal investigation agency, by that we mean separate police

institutions in biggest parts of the country. by that we mean airport security force, frontier constabulary. there is a range, a set of civilian law enforcement institutions. so that is one structure. that primarily comes under the control and command of ministry of interior. if you want any more details, there was recently my report which talks about all these different elements of civilian law enforcement infrastructure. so that is one component of security structure. the second component which in some ways is a part, a subsection of this first structure which is paramilitary forces. so in the first structure i talk about the four large civilian/police institutions in four provinces because in pakistan police and law enforcement and law and order is a provincial subject. which means it is ultimately inspector general of police in a

province, punjab or baluchistan. who is the chief ofless for that -- police for that district? he is not responsible for the center. the chief of police of around province responds to the chief, elected chief executive of the province. so that is one. the second is in between police and on the other side armed forces, in between is the paramilitary forces, frontier rangers. here, yes, they respond according to the constitution directly, they respond and are responsible and accountable to ministry of interior. but in effect they are led by senior-serving army officers, of major generals. to respond to ministry of superior or chief executive under certain circumstances. but in terms of their job requirements, this terms of their carrier prospects, in

terms of their decorum, in terms of the rules of engagement they respond in many ways to the army chief or to the military leadership because, after all, their postings as core commanders are dependent on the military chief. so this paramilitary force is somewhere in between civilian/police structure on one side and the military on the other side. who controls all these three segments is a long discussion. of course, the police in one, very clearly, it works under the executive chief of a province. and in some ways the prime minister as well. more so -- this is the police/civilian law enforcement structure works under any elected political government in islamabad or in provincial headquarters. for the frontier corps and rangers, it's a mixed control which creates problems also. and the third, the pakistan military.

yes, pakistan always has ministers for defense. they are normally the people -- i don't want to use they're good for nothing, but they're normally those senior politicians who have very little say in defense policy or i doubt -- and i can't think of any time where the chief of army, navy or air force ever visited ministry of defense because that's partly not in the cultural context, partly also because the way military coups had established the role of army. the ministry of defense in reality is just a post office where whenever there's budget issues, whenever there's some training issues, whenever there is some visa, the clearances are needed to go out, they just call between the civilian infrastructure, the civilian government and the military. but you see that pakistan's armed forces are completely independent in the any way, they

just decide on their own on many of these central issues, that that is not true. yes, they have a certain influence. the military commanders take over the country through martial law, that is altogether a different ball game. that's altogether -- it creates a new institutional framework. but whenever there's democracy which is the case presently, on many issues -- yes, maybe not in afghanistan, yes, maybe not specifically on peace process with india -- but by and large for institutional reasons, for training reasons, for budget reasons pakistan military, pakistan navy and air force they work absolutely, they function under the ministry of defense. yes, minister for defense, as i mentioned, may not be very powerful, but the prime minister and president to a great extent are. but i want to jump from here to a different question. and the question is, if this control is lacking -- and we

know it is, it's after all not well coordinated. these things i've mentioned, we very well know there's absolutely poor coordination, no cohesion. what is or what are the primary reasons for that lack of cohesion in the security forces in the country? after all, why, for example, armed forces have a separate -- [inaudible] in terms of public relations. they have an excellent web site. i think they're very professional. but why one pillar of the state or one important institution of the country will have a different independent fiat. that's an organizational issue. i doubt the ministry of defense or the ministry of information which is responsible for this has ever dealt with this issue in the any, in any detail or whether this issue was taken up between the prime minister, the president and even the army chief. but this, this explains something because in many cases you would see ministry of

information, which is responsible as spokesperson for the state and which represents all the three armed forces institutions, that their policy or their assessment on a certain thing differs. and this is very clear ab issue -- an issue of lack of cohesion. so why is there that lack of cohesion? i think two very basic reasons, and i'm sure all of you know if you think finish you know that very well. number one, of course, these constitutional interruptions. and my argument, of course, is if political process would have continued, things would have been much more in order in their place. in pakistan and its 60 years of history has shown that whenever the democratic process continued, military, yes, once in a while one general will have its independent position, but by and large you see that the whole system -- the military, the

defense department or the pakistani military leadership -- ultimately, in two, three, four years they started working more closely together. this visit by the prime minister of pakistan to kabul along with army chief and the isi chief is one example of that. i think increasingly -- it took them two or three years -- but increasingly the political and military leadership of pakistan is coming to one larger position. one hopes that will also be the case when it comes to pakistan's policy towards india. my argument is the way i'm developing my case, i am saying this will happen. don't expect that it will happen on the first day. two examples are very relevant here. one is in 2008 when this return to democracy was happening in pakistan, and i know this from having listened from the topmost political leaders of the country. the understanding was, yes, democracy's returning to the country, but for war on

terror-related issues, for security issues. it should be a new department of sorts, maybe something like homeland security, but that will be led by pakistan army chief. i heard it at that time, and this was -- now, i'm not sure it was on record, so let me reframe it. [laughter] the view in the political leadership of the country was that the war on terror should be led by pakistan military, and if there is, if there is even a civilian institution in the name, whatever new name they would have given which has police, frontier and military, that should be led by the military. when purely as a political sign disi would argue in any democracy that should not be the case. the leadership for any counterterrorism issue, for any defense issues should always be civilian. but in this case pakistan

realized the kind of challenges they're facing in terms of religious extremism and militancy in the tribal areas, it was only military who could do that. that was not an ideal situation, that was not an ideal thing, but that was the plan. i think it fizzled out. the second example is about initially after 2008 when pakistan's political government decided that they, the isi, the interservices intelligence, that they wanted to bring it under control. the problem was the way they did it was highly ill-advised. you just cannot do it overnight by just one stroke of pen giving one declaration or decision that from tomorrow onward the isi will function under the ministry of interior. army was offended, and they made it a point that within 24 hours

that decision was diverted. the iraq i am mention -- the reason i am mentioning this, this new political government's allies in washington, d.c. were also aware of this. whosoever advised this to the president of pakistan at that time whether political leadership in the country or whether someone in washington, d.c., was not aware of the current realities. things move in pakistan, especially when it comes to distribution of power and in terms of these institutional rivalries. it takes time. continuation of democracy and more accountability for any intelligence service in a longish process where you bring the intelligence officials in front of committees in the parliament where people are also becoming more open to respond to how intelligence agencies operate. that would have been the best way.

so coming back to this, these are the kinds of challenges we are facing. that basic question, why these security forces apparently and in reality also to a great extent work in different ways at times. it will see in different directions as well primarily because of constitutional interruptions and, secondly, because of the lack of rule of law. it is very instructive, it is very insightful that the chief justice of the supreme court of pakistan just yesterday while talking to senior army officers said it categorically: army has absolutely nothing to do with the policy of the state. whether that will be listened to or not, but it brings more pressure on the military government. i think i have a couple of minutes or i've run out of time? >> that's fine. >> just to conclude, to try to make sense of these four or five larger issues, as i had mentioned they are parallel

tracks for the police, for this paramilitary force and for pakistan military. but what will be the way forward? how will these three different pillars of the state act in more harmony? again, based on what i have said in my argument except constitutionalism and rule of law, there's no way out. even if we acknowledge and recognize that on issues, for example, north waziristan. the general reality or general perception is it is pakistan is' military chat putting its -- that is putting its foot down because we don't want everyone, we don't want to open every conflict theater. the other ideas about this issue are pakistan, of course, has some favorites whether haqqani or some other groups in that area who are kept in the loop

from a long-term perspective. but what i know and based on my interviews, i feel that in pakistan the president and the prime minister and the political government apparently also not only fully, not only fully agree to this position by the military because they know it is only military which is there. and the military-civil relationship will be dependent on financial issues, on budget with issues. so military, ultimately, is dependent on two things. irrespective of how much independent they want to be, irrespective of the fact that even the territorial boundaries they claim that they have a right to have to defend the ideological boundaries as well which is a very, very problematic concept. and one would have thought that that whole idea, the whole concept was buried with the former general. apparently, it is not. although the president leadership of pakistan, military s quite progressive and secular

in many ways, but a couple of times at least probably mistakenly, probably because that was in the mindset that even from the seniormost military leaders that this statement that we are also responsible for the ideological boundaries of pakistan. this statement was given, perhaps, i would argue, mistakenly. but coming back to the main theme. civilian and military leadership will automatically come closer to each other with the continuation of the democratic process. and that has already started happening because, ultimately, military is hugely dependent on budget. yes, at this point it may not be openly discussed in the department, how much budget a certain sector of pakistan or military defense will get, but increasingly this is being talked about. the media is open. just look at the, how the whole issue of raymond davis

controversy was covered in pakistan. every mainstream media very openly, strongly hinted at the role of the military. and they said whenever, ultimately, army decided that raymond davis has to be released. it was their decision, they managed it. it was an open critique. army now has more adjusted to this open criticism among the public. so there are these kind of pressures. political pressure in terms of budget, public pressure and these statements from judiciary. general kiyani and others -- i'm convinced that general kayani and his top commanders have absolutely no intention of running the state or conducting a military coup. they have no such design, i am pretty clear on this. but let's say for the sake of argument if any general had, it is now much, much more difficult to do that. so i would say this is because of continuation of democracy and the rule of law. just very briefly, so what is the way forward other than this

constitutionalism and rule of law? i believe there should be no culture of extensions. i think that's a very bad precedent. i don't know who came up with the idea, who agreed to it, who proposed it, but that even there a very professional point of view within the armed forces that is a problematic issue to create extensions. there's two more points about this need for a new civilian institution to take care of the civilian law enforcement side. and that i'm not going into in detail because i've dealt with that in one of my recent papers by usaid. if pakistani police, the cia, the local investigation agencies will all be under one umbrella, it will help them coordinate their work with military on one side and civilian/political leadership on the other. and last but not least, i think this is worth emphasizing, all of this might come into play.

we should not look at history and say that just because it happened previously that military put it foot down and enforced its decisions on the policy about india, afghanistan, that that is going to happen again. pakistan is a much different country in 2011 than even 2005 or 2006. but even in this context without the continuation of democracy these things, these institutions, these security forces, none of them will be able to manage pakistan. the continuation of democracy is the only way forward to bring a certain harmmy into this institutional framework. thank you very much. >> thanks very much. >> [inaudible] >> yes, please. >> thank you. thank you, bob. and thank you for putting this together. let me also dispel any ideas that i had anything to do with

this. he's the man who should get all the credit. he was kind enough to mention my name. let me follow up from what has been said already. i agree with some of it and, perhaps, add a little bit more to what has been said. but i want to start with a disclaimer. and the disclaimer is that if we want to look at pack spoon's civil- pakistan's civil-military dynamic and control of the security sector from a u.s. benchmark or from this ideal normative benchmark, i would argue pakistan would fail on pretty much every count. and it would be a fairly useless exercise. so what we have to do is really get into the pakistani context and then understand how things are operating and what direction things are moving in at present. and that's what i'll try to do in the time that i have.

it's critical, i think, to understand the peculiar nature of the pakistani policy in some ways. the civilian and the military dimensions as has been mentioned often run parallel to each other rather than in tandem with each other. the disconnect between the civil and the military is well known, and the fact that there's an anomalous relationship, you know, tons has been written about this. the reasons are deep, they go back to pakistan's independence and how things moved in the first decade of pakistan's history. i won't go into that. but suffice it to say that there is a major civil-military disconnect. which continues to persist in pakistan. if you look at how literature on this issue is presented, you'll always find this term civil

versus military. very, very seldom do you find the two mentioned as partners. now, i think that's an exaggeration, but it does tell you the mindset of the writer or journalist when they're writing. that's how they see the pollty develop. the second thing i think we have to understand is the pakistan army's mindset if you want to see how things in the security sector function in pakistan. and the mindset, i would argue, resembles the turkish military in a lot of ways if any of you are more familiar with that. it's an army which sees its ultimate task as defense of its borders but, also, sees itself as the ultimate arbiter of national interests. again, there are a number of deep-rooted reasons for that; how pakistan developed, what the situation was, how the civilians

acted, what the military saw it role and not least the environment pakistan existed in. and here i will, of course, point to the external dimension which is india. if there's one element which has driven pakistani minds over the past 63 years, it is the external threat that emanates from india. and that's varied over time, but that certainly has remained consistent in terms of the pakistani thinking as a nation. because india is the connection here and that is why the military, you know, has taken up this position that it has, it has had a major say in foreign policy on india and regionally in general. now, again, from a u.s. benchmark or from any international benchmark, that's probably not optimal. but if you get into how the

pakistani military is operated, how the civilians have operated, the environment and the fact that pakistan has seen 30 years of military rule, it's not difficult to understand how and why the pakistani military exercises influence over the country's foreign policy. and, again, india remains the moniker here. now, let me also make a point here that military and military dictators are not the same thing. too often we seem to look at pakistani military rulers as the institution of the military. not so. interestingly, the institution of the military in the all three periods of military rule is as upset at the fact that the military is being put into a political position as anybody else in pakistan is. so an average pill tear

soldier -- military soldier certainly has nothing to do with the fact that the of the country at that time happens to be a military ruler. so i think that distinction is important. but that said, i think it's fairly obvious that in the security realm in terms of military defense decisions the military has had much more influence than you would have in an average country. and the civilians, perhaps, have been on the back foot. as has been mentioned by the other two speakers, the ministry of defense is largely irrelevant to the way the security apparatus functions. i would challenge you to raise hands in how many of you actually know the name of the pakistani dependence minister. that says something. and, again, you know, this is not about finger pointing, but to make the fact that the ministry of defense necessarily does not play the role that

dod would in this country. the services are more important in pakistan's case. now, let me also give you the other side of the army's thinking which is -- and i'm making up this word, you won't find it in the dictionary -- but it's a constitutionalized army. unlike many other armies, it's not a fractionalized army, it is not an army that would willingly go out of its way and make a point to undermine the constitution and law of the land. now, the exceptions are, of course, there when there's a military coup that happens. but in general the army, from my understanding, takes pride in the fact that it will still remain part of the legal framework of pakistan and work within that. so it has a very civilized dimension to this. you won't find an army chief get up, make a public statement and say i don't care what experts

are saying, i'll do what i feel like. that would never happen. the institution is of the army, if you look at how they're brought up, the law -- the framework of law is very much part of their influence, and this comes directly from, i would argue, british india and the tradition that the british left. and i think that's also one of the reasons that the army has remained as coherent, as professional and as organized as it has. because it truly from an army -- from a military perspective truly believes that it is the ultimate savior of pakistan against external and internal threats. in their mind while i think i completely agree that the military, you know, has a major economic interest in the country, for a military mind if you talk to them, they would sincerely convince you even today i think that they're

really here to defend this country and save it for all others. this is not about making money. unlike many other militaries which i could point to which did this. and so there's an interesting dichotomy here. the military remains the most influential and very important in a number of ways, and yet it works through the system. ..

>> the military has only received i share of what was intended for the military through the a that is coming to pakistan post-9/11. it has received less than one its quote unquote was supposed to. now, let me make one exception your to this idea of what is the law. even there i would argue, it's a constitutionalize army even in that output, but perhaps it is lowest when it comes to one question. that is foreign policy dealing with india. they are the military has extended and tried to have more than once than usual. that is not to say that civilians still don't have the

same or it doesn't work through the civilians. but there was one exception which i think to my mind was the low point in terms of relations in pakistan. there was a major eruption in some ways and the legacy still continues where the army chief has one perspective on why pakistan went into. the primus has a different perspective and was brought out in the open. now, let me add here that the civilians have done themselves absolutely no favors, if the idea is to balance the civil military equation. number one, there is no expertise to speak of in the political parties of the civilian sphere on security matters. and that's because a clinical scientist year but if you have a status quo power, let's just go

that for the sake of argument, the military. how do you usurp some of space the military has? you do it by informed analysis of arguments, opinions. there's actually nothing of that in the civilian sector. to the point that i think if out of the conversation on security with the civilians after five minutes they were probably say every few feel like, i don't know what you're talking about. i think that is one fundamental problem. in fact, this topic was part of my dissertation and what i found in my interviews was that when civilians did challenge the military on specific issues, foreign office or politicians, the military did back off. so again it's constitutionalize military in that sense. if i may use that term again. then, of course, traditionally there's been absolutely no consensus on democracy as the only mechanism to rule pakistan through. even the politicians, very

interesting, and the '90s this happen very frequently. went to the military and as the military to help them pick out so they could have a fresh election and coming to power. there's been tremendous immaturity showed even on the part of the civilians in the past. and the status quo power that you want to take away some space from, this is hardly the way you're going to achieve it. bob asked to talk specifically about some of the military's. so very quickly let me just go over them. i think the narrative that we heard often, and i think, it's military does everything. it's very exaggerated. in the civilian law-enforcement side i think the military has very little to do with it except about military forces. the police, airport security, et cetera, the military basically has nothing to do with it. and i would argue it is the envy

of the civilian institutions because it's probably the strongest in terms of the space and the power it has. let me also say a word about the isi. again, the narrative is isi rogue element does whatever it feels like. i've never won this argument. i've written quite a bit about this, unicom in my work but the isi basically took orders from the military chief of the time. it may have done a number of things like the cia and others were involved in, like the policy in kashmir, like the policy of the taliban in the '90s. but the fact is that was all pakistan state policy. so when you appoint a particular chief of your organization, with a particular meaning, you already know what work is going to do and what you want him to do. so in the '90s the direction with ideological.

you got a number who believe in the right wing ideology. and now since this is the third isi chief which i think has a particular mandate to pull back the isi from that and bring it back from the ideological bent. i think they've done very well. it will take a long time. a number of complications year. but this argument, they do what they want and the pakistani state has no control, i'm not sure. even isi's political meddling, which is probably a part of what happened done in the past, was really sanctioned by some and. the isi chief never got up and said let's figure out what to do. so i think that partly has to change. yes, a number of things the isi does we may not like because it may not be in the interest of somebody, but that does not amount to saying that this is an organization that lives on mars.

quickly, -- how much time do i have, bob? okay, good. that's the benefit of being a resident scholar. on the nuclear issue, that's another one that bob had asked, again, i personally think that -- nuclear issue is interesting because here's a question of how do you convince somebody, the nuclear issue is one that it probably worked most on out of these. and it turns out within the organized mechanism, the division which is a -- a fairly well functioning organization, although definitely more military sort of presence and an average country perhaps, but pakistan has something called the mca, which is the overarching national command authority. which is headed by first was the president and that is the prime minister. and should also blame it was

and, of course, military person in the. this is exactly the stretch that any other country has. for nuclear division making. right? when i talk to some in the nuclear establishment they would tell me yes this is, the prime minister will decide what to do. the problem is nobody believes that. because there's an internal civil military disconnect, and this enormous relationship, then leads me to believe no, it will be the military. there's no possibility. that's what anybody would say, that's how it is decided. whether it will be decided that we are not, you know, time will tell. hopefully we will never have to see the day when any pakistani ruler has to make that decision. also here, interestingly, the prime ministers have in the past had a major share on what to do,

on the nuclear program. class example 1998 nuclear, it was the prime minister of the time and the foreign office which was more protesting than the army chief. and so the very interesting dynamic here, the military press pulling back a bit and the prime minister going ahead with it. i think it's much more nuanced and complicated than we often hear. let me know quickly turn to the final part which is the trains at the moment. i think overall i would argue the trains are looking up in terms of looking in the right direction. the trend is very gradual but i think the direction is the correct one. there is much more debate out in the role of the military in pakistan itself. people write, people criticized it and can constitutionalize military, so you will see that debate continue as time goes on.

i think the civilians also need to be given credit for having decided that they're not going to do what they did in the '90s. they're not going to go to an army chief and say can you please help us out. it was a document signed between the two major parties in pakistan which clearly spelled out this need for civilians be mature, back off and not try to use the military. i think that is positive. the defense budget, some of the i mentioned already. i also find in my experience in interviews that the military, this is a major change, mentally i think conception of the military now realizes that a strong pakistani economy is critical for pakistan and for the military. so this idea of overstretched of the defense spending is also bothering the military. this idea that pakistan cannot keep up with india in terms of its arms procurement, arms buildup is very clearly understood i think that the

military as well. so that also is positive. judicially, i think hassan touched on that. i think is vibrant judicially and usual activism is also something, and you see very clearly institutions trying to stay away from confronting any other major institution in pakistan but i think that's also a major positive sign. now, where is the disappointment? the disappointment is something that shuja nawaz touched on and this to my mind i honestly surprised me quite a bit. wishes of that this time around post 2008 it's not about the military trying to keep space. it's about the civilians voluntarily abdicating that space to the military. you know, one heard of in the initial days after 2008 that

this is the best chance, the military chief was trying to go back openly, saying we don't want to do anything with politics. musharraf was very unpopular. there was the death of pakistan's most famous, most popular political leader which are given a lot of sympathy to the politicians. the political parties were in a coalition government, and yet that very first one or two briefings with the military uprise the civilian leadership of the situation on the ground, basically receives the response from civilian principle sank good luck, do whatever you think is right. if you're talking of rebalancing and if the civilians are themselves willing to abdicate that responsibility, then there's hardly any other excuse that one needs to provide for what is happening in pakistan. let me end by saying how we may move forward, and this is where i become unpopular in pakistan a lot of times, but so be it.

there are two opinions. one thing is the military has no business in anything defending the territory and so they need to back off and that this is going to do what they're doing. my answer is great, that's idealistic. i started by saying remain in the pakistan context when you think of pakistan. the other alternative is that the civilians create the space for themselves to be able to tackle this issue effectively. if the civilians don't have this capacity i think even an average pakistan will say i don't care, i don't want more problem. so let the military do it. three or four specific things, and i will end this. one, the consensus not to use the military for political reasons needs to be maintained. second, i think learning much more about security, building the expertise government getting the right people on the civilian

local parties, understand this business. and either for or against the military. activating current structures like the defense cabinet, sort of cabinet committee on defense which is traditionally not been able to play the role that was envisioned. and most importantly, and i repeat this is most important, the civilians have to perform in their own governance casks much better to the point where there's a philosophical commitment to democracy in pakistan. the average man and woman on the street in pakistan still did not see democracy as the only option. there is restlessness, in patients, every supporting governments sleet. and while i completely agree with hassan that the political process has to continue i the civilians have a major role in ensuring that that happens by performing in terms of general

governance, to the point where people generally start trusting in the state and see them as the only real alternative. and lastly, i think there needs to also be a discussion on how the pakistani military and the civilians can come together in decision-making processes. ideas have become a center. what we need to study literature from other countries and see how things move. there's no overnight change. there was no idealism which was a. i have done comparative work on turkey and pakistan and there are three points that came out of the turkey study. which told me on why the turkish military move from being what it was to what it is now. number one, conflict in the region that anything we can do to them is critical. second, there is an impetus, e.u. in this case. so south asian is something that

needs to be promoted. and, finally, there was a constitutional mechanism for the military to have a say in security sector decision-making. which was a constitutional in turkey, but something around the nsc or the cabinet defense committee, where the two sides have the means to sit down and talk together rather than at each other. perhaps in the short run is a sub optimal but better solution than actually looking for this idealism. thank you. >> i'd like to thank the members of the panel for three very informative presentations. i'd like to now move to the question and answer part of our program this morning, and also i'd like to welcome c-span who is broadcasting live, and also

television has been with us this morning. the way we are going to do this in order to capture people's questions for the television audience is to ask you to move to one of the two stationary microphones that are in the room. one is back year, the other is over here. so if you have a question, please move to one of those microphones. that's the first request. the second request is when you ask a question, if you would state your name and the organization that you are affiliated with. and thirdly, that you really to ask a question. we will try to get to everybody here. so, all right, we have a number -- i think that's going to ask a question by walter l. i'll ask the panelists also to be brief so we can get through everyone. let's start with this microphone here, please.

[inaudible] since i heard only transit i want to ask you a question. use the pakistani military is not about making money, making dollars. can you tell me a single example of a gentleman who was prosecuted, and he was prosecuted on corruption because there was another general who hated him. that was the only reason. pakistani military is the most corrupt, most incompetent institution on earth. they are corrupted 99% of pakistani politician are corrupt. why are they? because the pakistani military, they are the ones who make the politician and you break the politician. if it was speedy do we have a question? >> no, i want to get this because this is problem. and also i'm giving step-by-step. pakistani military made millions of dollars in terms of the

others when their country. know, american generals are making millions of those because they're the ones who are controlling afghanistan. okay, about your discipline to any military because they give their life, integrity of the country. any third-world country. this logic is wrong. >> could i get you to ask, to get to the question? really can't we have so many people here. we have so little time spent let me give you the other example. i think pakistani military has never won a single were from india. my friend, you compare the size of your gdp for defense but pakistan is the highest on the topic israel is the second but israel has control. pakistan hasn't won a single were from india. the other thing, i have many points speak please, please the pakistani military would do anything like pakistani

politicians. [inaudible] same thing about my sharp. tasha musharraf. political process. who send? it mean he could do anything to his people but he cannot do, he cannot stand against a mad dog that it's shameless. so to me, pakistani holidays, pakistan journalist have no sense of shame. >> can we have the next question please? and please make a question. >> good morning. thank you very much for your presentation. ima franklinville at the u.s. department of state. i have a question with regard to what has just taken place in pakistan. i understand it was a detonation of a nuclear device, warhead, today.

it is a small warhead that's only capable of going 60 kilometers, but the mobility of it, this is just announce today in the news. and given the dynamics between the pakistan military and the civilian government and our present, our present military i believe, admiral mullen is in the region, what does this speak to the issues of pakistan's military in the area, the intent, the intent of the civilian government, the intent to the region? and, indeed, come india, to detonate this particular -- could anyone answer that? >> thank you very much. >> i don't turn on, to turn these microphones on. i think this is a small room. everyone can hear. so do you want to start?

>> actually there is no, god forbid, it is a nuclear detonation we probably wouldn't be here. it was a missile. this is a missile missile tested fairly regular. these are fairly regular exercises by pakistan, india, all which have missile technology. there's nothing more the pakistani upgrade their missile program as our other country. there wasn't any nuclear element to this exercise. this is a very good exercise. and actually pakistan and india have, i don't get it, they have an understanding with a pre-notified each other before any such tests. >> i just had wanted to add to this. i'm not fully with the latest test, but in the last few years,. [inaudible] the only issue is the atomic energy commission, and then go

to laboratory developing nuclear weapons. there was always a sibling confident in the decision-making process which was important that lately it seems that all the major decisions about pashtuns nuclear policy in which test have to be conducted, how many nuclear weapons you have, what about the reactors which are important, these are important things. security interest, but my issue with that is increasingly there is only -- all of that decision-making has come completely under the military, despite the command-and-control system which is seen civilian leaders seeking in it for all practical reasons, it isn't hard enough within the role of the military. my argument is with commendation of democracy hopefully the civilian military interaction about pakistan's nuclear policy would hope would also decrease

expect what i would like to do is take to question and they will have our panel respond. here and here quickly and then we will have a response. >> i am with you pakistani american center. thank you for a brilliant help at all three of you are so my favorite and last on pakistan. it's interesting what having this discussion today because either today or yesterday general kayani was in pakistan. he made a statement to never again be another operation in baluchistan. he was sending with i guess the chief minister, but what was interesting to me about that he was at the migration of a government technological institute. the last time he was there i think he was and not doing a marble corn plant. i think this question that moeed raises is, you know, as clinical scientist we would all like the civilian government in charge of the debugger. but is the army right now the best institution within pakistan

to be doing some of these things, be helping with marble development or education or the frontier. is a which is the most effective organization? my second question presidents i met with a senior politician. i was surprised just her opinion was in the united states is not complete civilian control of the caa. there's the cia running amok in pakistan and the u.s. did have complete control which i didn't think was to but is that a perception that is very prominent in pakistan or not? >> thank you. spoke -- [inaudible] bruce riedel has written a column in "newsweek" in terms of the use of strategic assets like laundry, et cetera. the fact that this has also been brought up by general petraeus and miller, testimony in congress, and the fact that this

in a way is inevitable because of past mistakes by the u.s. in terms of the withdrawal from afghanistan. my question in a sense is, is this strategic depth still necessary? because others have also spoken about the deterrence factor that pakistan has in terms of its nuclear capability, vis-à-vis india. so why is it that still this perception that india is the threat to manifest itself, despite the fact that these strategic assets like any terror group may be necessary in a place like afghanistan and the nuclear deterrent is indeed there? >> thank you very much. >> the strategic depth they talk about, these are the afghan taliban in afghanistan, vis-à-vis india. when you made a strong case that nuclear deterrence has held. >> okay. those are two very good questions.

should we go down the panel what do you want to start? >> in reference to the first question about military's role or responsibility of capacity to counterinsurgency. they also have to build. i think yes, military as organize institution, has that capacity. but we have seen from 1960s onward, whenever military is invited to play a role, even if that is frankly constructive relating to building roads or something like that, military start thinking that if they are running and they're the only ones to do that development, then why not out and there's more public demand, why should they not come and take over pakistan. might issue also related to this is yes, this is a positive thing. they should do in tribal areas where there in complete, not

control but they're the only ones operating in the area. so in a step-by-step, military has to focus only on what is its fine focus. secular related issues. and relating to the discussion today, who controlled security issues? i was a their respective of who controls, if the pakistani security forces could of been really been doing their primary job, the police, law enforcement, military of counterterrorism are securing the country, i would get all these pakistani eight -- so all other aspects, second. that's a big challenge. they are sacrificing a lot, but it is the overall strategy of counterterrorism. that's the real test. everyone will be ready in pakistan to forget that there's civil military disconnect it is a primary response but of these is the heavy forces are

fulfilled and completed, and that unfortunately at this time i would argue is not happening in the real sense. >> anybody else? >> let me add, i think very briefly, the army, the military is have the advantage of running economic enterprises. this is something that resides in the civil and should reside in a civil. but very interestingly, the events have some background that are worth highlighting, that the army intend to build, and, in fact, the effort that is now being publicized was the army moving away from creating that kind of a, and handing over all the buildings for civilian enterprises, and so some of the of the events are being publicized the are part of the handing over to the civilians

for civilian activities, the buildings and infrastructure that the military was reported to have set up for its own location of troops in baluchistan. the point regarding the use of the military in baluchistan without the provinces approval is the one that i was referring to, that the military now seeks and will only move once it gets the provincial governments requisition for the military to come in eight of civil part. if this policy is continued i think this is a good thing for pakistan to develop. regarding the whole issue of strategic depth, i think you're mixing up 80 defunct idea of strategic depth. the issue of the role of these insurgent groups that are not operating against a state in

pakistan but our operating against neighboring states is one that needs to be discussed much openly in pakistan for their to be a very clear understanding of how pakistan needs to move away from these activities. the previous government of president musharraf had created distance between itself and these groups, but the reality is that the groups are now becoming -- and independent finances and they have regional links and ties. and even though there may be people in the intelligence agency that pakistan who feel that they have control over them, i think over time we have learned that those controls are fictional. >> we are experiencing a few technical problems this morning. we will stay with a microphone

situation that we have. >> let me just make a couple of points. the cia, i don't know. cia would know. but i think by definition, no intelligence agency is completely under anybody's control, even under the control of their own chief. otherwise much of what happens probably wouldn't happen. but certainly hopes that whatever mr. davis was up to was not, you know, being monitored. i think these are intelligence agencies have a funny way of working but i'm not sure. i think the procession in pakistan is perhaps just like the perception here. and there needs to be some conversation on that if he got exactly what the truth is. on this strategic depth, i just make one point to add to what has been said. i think part of the problem in pakistan and india is that both sides are complacent and think that they know the other side

perfectly well. been a great their own narratives about that and that keeps on selling open to. strategic depth in pakistan as it existed in the '90s is dead. but it is well unlike and taking in india. all start when i hear an old indian fred seems to be dead in india but if i don't alive and kicking in pakistan. this is why i'm a big fan of dialogue no matter what because these are the kind of misunderstanding that need to be clarified that if india still believes that the '90s strategic depth is there, then, of course, the indian policies will be based in the frame but if pakistan believes it will happen, then they would do. they need to be much more conversation to clear this up. >> i think the fact that wikileaks brought this out again into the open where the u.s. ambassador and tally was referring as reality has further increased the paranoid inside pakistan. >> we want to take two more

questions. and then we'll have a response. please, go ahead. >> thank you. great panel. and my pleasure for any other panelists who wish to address. what has been the impact of the floods and the relief operations on the floods come and against even the prospect of another round of floods on the relative civilian military balance in the country, either relationship with the outside world, the respect and prestige of the military and civilian and so forth, have the floods have a significant impact on these issues? >> thanks very much. >> both of you mentioned the military is concerned about the economy and pakistan. last year senior secured the officer from the pakistan particular presentation about how much revenue. the question is, we have seen the army has decided to go ahead with building the new headquarters. has been increased by 18%. so the question is, having as

any significant changes the military has taken towards addressing the economy problem anymore? acid in our cooperation on the issue? either pressing the sibling government to push for reform? >> we will give hassan start because he has to leave. so you go first and then if you have to leave as we will all understand. >> thank you. in terms of the first question that i think civil military relationship in coordination improve their in the reconstruction rehabilitation phase after the floods but the military came to rescue out and the coordinationfrom especially this new institution, of which i'm forgetting the name, which is led by an army officer under the sibling control. so floods in terms of -- thank you very much.

so the civil military response in comparison to previous such national -- natural disaster such as in 2005, this time the civilian military coordination was much better than before. that's my comment on that. >> anybody else? >> on the economy, i detect a much greater interest on the part of the economy for the reasons that i mentioned in my opening remarks. i don't think that the army is going ahead with plans to make a new general headquarters in islamabad. that plan was shelved last year. after the cost of that came out into the open. so the army chief made that decision. they are, in fact, going to renovate and state in the army headquarters that has been there

since before independence. on the floods, i think it is worth pointing out that this is one of those constitutional areas where the military comes in eight of civil part, and they are among the first responders. and yes, it did help them a great deal, but it is also hindered their ability to conduct counterinsurgency operations because with the employment of forces that were in the flood areas, particularly forces closer to the indian border, it hasn't slowed down the rotation cycle of troops in flat top -- fatah. so there will be as long as two years. this does have an effect on efficiency and effectiveness of the forces and on the morale of the individuals, some of whom have now got to two or three cycles of fatah. so that does have an effect.

>> what i'd like to do know is i would like to take the three remaining questions, and respond we'll ask all the members of the pale to respond to we get their concluding remarks and their answers to the questions and then we'll wrap up a bit early because of the panelists here have also commitment to they have made. so let's start here and then go over here for the last few. >> garden, resident can indian officers association. in the u.s.a. my question is very simple. could you please elaborate, what is the interaction with army and isi? is isi and extraconstitutional power body? it has its effect on internal as

well as external operations. there's a case going on in the u.s.a. involving isi chief as well as the army. also, the drone attacks, would crystallize the internal policy, internal policy and the defense. also in connection with isi. >> thank you. >> hi. i am susan cornwell with reuters. and my question, is especially for mr. nawaz since he touched on this at one point, and that is about the u.s.a. to pakistan since 9/11, 2002, most of which has been military aid and there's been billions of it and just wondering if you see this

continuing in the foreseeable future. does pakistan need and expect this aid? and to u.s. interests to continue in such a way that the u.s. needs to do this? and the recent tensions, say over to ray davis? no, and the drones have any impact on that? pakistan and our final question. [inaudible] i would like to ask because your doctor military but you didn't talk military to military. we all know military is controlling just the whole city forces and pakistan. but tell me, who is controlling military. we are having a lot of work done who is this benefiting, economically, politically, socially from the military? i mean, there is a book as well, and the second thing, you didn't talk about the rule in politics.

that is very important because we have -- [inaudible] there are other circumstances but i could give examples but we don't have done. the next question is, you say that the military is working within the constitution, within the system, but when villeneuve just civilian government, there was no constitution. where was the constitution? and also there is no single element that finished his term in office. because of the military intervention. okay, because people want it but they removed just the legal, the government at the time. i mean, there are many circumstances. and also i don't see -- >> we need to wrap up the deck

just one. i don't find these perspectives in this bill. last time it was baluchistan. this time it is military but i don't see different perspective. and of psychology talk the same. i mean -- >> thank you all. let's let our panel respond to this question and then make their closing remarks. >> thank you. and with your permission i'll respond to one of the questions. i would like to make my initial comment, final comment so i can lead and be in time in new york to teach today. in terms of the first question, i think the eyesight is not an extraconstitutional body. the chief of isi, according to the constitution, response to the prime minister. there have been issues and you all know about the history, but currently the isi and its chief are absolutely accountable to the army chief. and so the isi is not a body which is different or exclusive independently.

than the military. and i think we also made this point about this close interaction between the isi and the army. just one brief comment about the last question. the same thing with all three people with different institution, different backgrounds, different viewpoints, that means we are all right. [laughter] fine. but i just make one comment, very brief one comment. concluding. in one case i do defer, and there were act i think to my different, there were some very interesting and very important and deep differences between of the three narratives, though in slightly different ways. one point i want to defer with, with respect to mike a good friend, is one of the points that pakistani political leadership, apparently that's the capacity to make important decisions about defense issues. my response to that is, the first person, the political

leader in pakistan had great insights was that she had a very good understanding about defense issues, was thrown out of government twice, and isi and the pakistan military has played an important role. finally, the military, civilian agencies and civil military saved him from assassination also. despite his weaknesses and some people in pakistan depicted as a goofy character which is partly to at least, but in case of pakistan relationship with india, i think yet taken a very bold step in 1998. some political leaders when they get a chance, they go towards peace process with india or other issues. we need to cut down on convention, expanding conventional forces. in pakistan has a nuclear deterrent capacity which is very good for pakistan, that means you may never got a very large conventional army.

to pursue pakistan's develop and today, we cannot continue to afford pakistan air force, a the, navy, army now the way they do know. this is a case are clear political leadership is making. they're not making it effective. they need to do a better job. a need more attraction to civilian militia. sunsetting and the president or prime minister is talking to someone in washington, d.c., and avoid as against pakistan army, to dismantle the. know, no one wants that at all. the only thing is that the political leadership in pakistan is mature. yes, they'll be in the process, better decision-making, effective interaction will happen. but the basic point about the capacity, i was slightly disagree. the problem is i don't have time because i will miss my train

your. >> before you leave the room i will say something that we are clear on this. i think everything you said i could agree with so you didn't misunderstand what i said. >> i'm sorry, thank you. >> hydro dam going to add to it hassan said about the relationship between the isi and the government. i think the question of drone attacks was mentioned also by the colonel. i don't know if this was in relation to the first question or not, because i miss that connection. but certainly the drone attacks do create a difficulty with in pakistan. because the government has been speaking against drone attacks. in the past, even while the government was aware that the military and intelligence services work of operating at least initially with the united states.

with intelligence that led to some of the drone attacks. so that public dichotomy between the public and the private stance has now sort of come out into the open, somewhat. regarding the question about u.s. aid to pakistan, i should say one thing first, which is when you look at the content of aid, you have to removed from it the coalition support which is the largest single component because that's the reimbursement. that is not a. that's to compensate pakistan for what it has spent, the cost it has incurred in moving troops in response to the request from the united states, to assist them in that part of region. when they removed that than the total content of aid over this extensive theater becomes much smaller. and the relative proportion of military to economic aid also changes dramatically.

interest, the amount of assistance that pakistan needed was not provided, and that was not just in the financial side, but on the equipment that pakistan needed in order to prosecute in the western border region. there is have a reference to the lack of helicopters, and these data are available. i would be glad to share with you the full details of all the agreement that has been provided since 9/11 so you can reach your own conclusions. on the last one, control of the military, question, i think civilian supremacy is something the military accepts, but the reality on the ground is that there has been the preparation that i would feel is necessary on the part of civilian

authorities to run government. when they're out of power, that's the time when they should be acquiring the skills and preparing so when they do come into power they can then run government. in pakistan it's a question of governance, and because of lack of governance, the public tends to shift to the military because they see it as a discipline institution. but then what's the military comes in, they realize this is not the military's job. it's not what they are trained for. and then the cycle repeats itself. so we have got to break out of that cycle. >> moeed? >> just a few quick comments. on the services, i think i did cover this when i spoke and said that the isi basically falls a very much within the framework of the pakistani security establishment. and may have done things and do things others don't like but it's part of the pakistani state apparatus that i'd are seen as a rogue organization. i do find any evidence for that at least.

in terms of who controls the military, i think the military controls the military. it's as simple as that. i think that was the basis of my entire argument, that the civilian supremacy and the international norm does not exist in pakistan at this point. now that we just combine a couple of other comments and what hassan had mentioned -- [inaudible] >> the army chief i think, army chief is probably -- [inaudible] >> the chief of the army. [inaudible] spent the army chief is the one. that's all i can do. which family it is, you decide that. in terms of the civil military, and i think as part of what i was saying that the civil military disconnected so much, and even in the questions refer. he almost have to have a polarized view of the.

rather than what i think is the ultimate salvation for pakistan, which is the civilians and military have to work together whatever the differences is, then to overcome this date will keep these parallel tracks. i'm not sure what gave this impression that i said that the military has never violated the constitution. i stated very clearly that are the exceptions and when they use them, it only means that they don't come out crudely and say to hell with everything, we are the master. so even in the '90s which refer to, they use constitution mechanism to sabotage the government's. that's all i'm saying. it's a different kind of military than you see in any other countries where they basically declare that they are the final, they are the ones that nobody -- and that i think comes from the british tradition. they want to do things which are not done with civilian supremacy hold, but they do it in certain ways which are sort of hiding behind the scenes. asks that, of course, the are

the exception. and final point is that i completely agree with the other speakers, and i think i said this. that if you want pakistan to get out of this, the only what is to let the political process function. the mistakes will be made. it will be messy. washington will not like it. many in pakistan will not like it. if you keep disrupting the system, ultimately it will never mature. i still maintain that i don't think the civilians so far have that kind of capacity in defense issues and security as they should. to push back a status quo power. and i realize this is an unpopular view, but quite frankly as a political scientist i studied enough militaries and enough literature that unless the other side challenges of them, through either performance or whatever, they don't pull back. so it has to be a political process, only out of this will be civilians become stronger and you see some stability in the

civil military arena. >> thank you very much. i would like to express my appreciation to our panel and ask you to join me in doing the same. [applause] >> this has been extremely lively session. often our sessions are lightly, but this was unusually slow. so i want to thank the audience for being here and staying with us. for some really interesting and challenging questions. and we have a table full of publications outside so i will direct your attention there as you lead. thank you for coming. we hope to see you with us again soon. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> now a discussion on the future of sudan. will hear from the former presidents of south africa, and magic at all minutes of the african union high level implementation panel for sudan. the republic of sudan is scheduled to declare its formal independence on july 9. from the united states institute of peace, this is an hour and 50 minutes.

>> welcome everyone. we will start our program. i am rudy deleon, senior vice president here at the center for americanic progress. this is the first of two panels that we're going to be doing on afghanistan today. that is part of a series comingp on the ten-year mark of this fall in afghanistan, and so i think it's a time both to focus on current activities in the theater, but also to start asking questions in terms of the lessons learned. the ten-year milestone of combat activities is a bit unique in terms of the armed forces of the united states in terms of time and length.

and so we have with our program here today, part one will look at counterinsurgency and some of the lessons learned on the security side. and then panel number two, which will be chaired and moderated by our colleague at the center, dr. larry korb and jeff lawyer rememberty of the century foundation, they'll be talking on their recent study that included tom pickering, other senior diplomats of which larry was one of the members of the panel. they'll be looking at the prospects for dialogue and negotiation. so if you will, talking, fighting or somewhere in between seemed to be the two segments that we're going to be discussing today. now, in terms of this panel we've got two very distinguished participants, and we're going to sort of get them going, and i

don't think i'll have to be a referee too much of the time. but i think that there are clear opinions and strong arguments on both sides. but i think our focus today is not necessarily to relive the past, but instead to understand the lessons for the future. so, first, our guest dr. john nagl, is the president of the center for a new american security. he's also a member of the defense policy board where we both serve, also served on the congressional commission to look at the quadrennial defense review where we both, both worked together. a graduate of west point, he's written books, he's been on a lot of very impressive academic groups in his career. a teacher also. and has been an adviser to some of our current military leaders in the field.

so, john nagl, welcome to the center for american progress. >> pleasure to be here, rudy. >> and, of course, my other colleague here at the center, brian katulis, our senior fellow with a focus, really, on u.s. national security in the middle east and south asia. brian has served as a consultant to numerous u.s. government agencies, private entities, nongovernmental organizations, projects in more than two dozen countries including iraq, pakistan, afghanistan, yemen, egypt and colombia. from 1995 to 1998, he lived and worked in the west bank and on the gaza strip, in egypt for the national democratic institute for international affairs. he has a master's degree from princeton's woodrow wilson school of public and international affairs and a ba in history and arab studies from villanova.

so thank you, brian, for being engaged here. two very capable men, two regional experts. and so what i'm going to do is just to start this program by asking each of them to offer a general assessment on the status of current activities in afghanistan. john? >> thanks, rudy. great to be here. i would, i would take minor exception to one thing you said, if i can. i would not bill myself as a regional expert but a long-time student of counterinsurgency with an interest in afghanistan. but i make no claims to be an expert on that country. i've been watching and working on afghanistan for a number of year now but not a regional expert. that said, the principles of counterinsurgency are being applied in afghanistan, i think, to a pretty high degree.

my general assessment of the situation is that we are seeing a fragile but reversible gains, but i think clear gains. what i'd like to do, if i can, is run down the operation and the counterinsurgency campaign and just make a quick assessment against each of those. these came from an article written by major general pete chiarelli, we've used his analysis, stole shamelessly from it as we were writing the army/marine corps counterinsurgency field manual, and general chiarelli came up with six lines of operation. combat with operations and civil security operations, building host nation security forces, providing essential services to the population -- giving them good governance -- promoting economic development. all of that wrapped up in a comprehensive operations campaign. those are the six lines that a counterinsurgency force tries to follow as it conducts one of

these campaigns. just making a quick assessment against eachover those. combat operations and civil security operations we're showing fairly remarkable progress, i would say. the classic, clear/hold/build counterinsurgency strategy is working well where we have sufficient forces on the ground, and really sort of the broad overview of my argument is that we didn't really start a counterinsurgency campaign in afghanistan until 2009. it was very much an economy of force effort. we took our eyes off that ball really as early as late 2002 and didn't refocus on afghanistan and give it the resources it needed until 2009. so the campaign, in a lot of ways, really started at that point, and we've -- we're able to put forces on the ground we are able to conduct effective civil security operations. similarly, nation security forces, dramatic progress. really since lieutenant general

bill caldwell took charge of that effort in november 2009, and we've seen a dramatic increase in the quantity, but also increasingly in the capability of afghan security forces, and that's incredibly important. ultimately, we are going to hand off responsibility to an afghan government and to afghan security forces, so we have to have something to hand off to. i think we've made real progress there. those are the only two lines that are military lines. the other four are not primary military responsibilities and, frankly, they haven't been as successful. we are still providing fairly limited essential service to the population, security being the most essential service. but access to the necessities of life is still very much a problem for the afghans. their governance is improving very slowly from a very, very low base. economic development is actually a good news story. double-digit growth rates in afghanistan really for the past

ten years. from, again, a very, very low base but fairly remarkable achievements there. cell phone penetration in afghanistan has gone from zero to well over 50% in the last ten years. and that is an important part of how information is transmit inside that country. this, i think, probably the area we're least effective both on the ground in afghanistan and here in the united states in the terms of communicating what it is we're trying to accomplish and demonstrating progress toward those goals. so that's my general assessment of the counterinsurgency campaign. gradual progress more marked on the military side and with real problems in governance. i'll be interested to see what brian thinks. >> great. thanks, rudy. and before i start i would be remiss not to mention our colleagues carolyn and katherine

who have worked in partnership with larry, and we've got a great team and a great series here, and we're glad that you're all here, and we're honored to have john here to take part in this discussion. i agree with much of what just john said and what i'll offer are complimentary observations about what's going on and then raise some broader points about the sustainability. of the strategy which, i think, is really important. i think it's pretty clear and we all read the same newspapers that there are improvements in the security situation in certain parts of afghanistan. in the southern part of the country, and it's no surprise to me, we have the finest fighting force the world has ever known. you put them in a place, it will have an impact. and i think we've seen that in multiple occasions around the world. that said, we do have a deteriorating security situation in other parking lots of the country, and if you -- parts of the country, and if you judge this based on the core metric of

counterinsurgency and, john, you wrote an article with nate thicke at the start of the obama administration which highlighted and reminded folks what counterinsurgency was. and it placed a premium on protecting the population and the civilians over killing the enemy. now, if you judge just based on that metric and look at 2010, 2010 was a very bad year for protecting the civilians of afghanistan, was the worst year, i think, since we've been in the country. and i think 2011 will be a moment of truth. that said, and i think it's important to highlight that the 2700 or so afghan civilians who were kill inside violence in afghanistan in 2010, the vast majority of them were killed by the insurgents which, i think, will lead us into a deeper discussion about how you implement counterinsurgency, whether we have the capacity to do that and are we about to turn the corner as many people had argued, say, in the middle part

of 2007 in iraq. but i would say that there are two main impediments that i think have been identified all along in the obama administration from all of this assessments from bruce riedel to the commander's assessment, general mcchrystal and others. two major impediments; pakistan and weak governance and corruption in afghanistan. here we are today two years later, and i would argue that we're not much further along in that. and we have serious questions about the sustainability of the effort in afghanistan if we were to even leave or start to leave in 2011 with the goal of handing over security by 2014 which is the current plan whether things that we're helping to create will exist, and i know we'll get into this. there's also a broader question of the sustainability of a counterinsurgency effort which, as you know, began in earnest in 2009, but we'd been on the ground since 2001, 2002. and i think we'll get into this,

i think, deeper in the discussion, but i think a lot of people are asking the question from a strategic level whether the costs actually are worth the benefits that it provides to u.s. national security interests. and i think that's sort of the deeper discussion. i know we'll talk about the tactics and the operations and different pieces. so, in essence, i think that we are still not out of the woods yet. i know we all look forward and commanders and people at the white house look for some sort of catch phrase. i think we're not certain in terms of where we are. there's an improved security situation in a certain part of the country, but the real question i'd like to focus on is the sustainability of this. are we doing things that will actually last in the long run, and then secondly, will those things accrue to the benefit of u.s. national security interests. and i think those two questions are still very much open questions. >> thanks, brian and john, for getting us going. you know, let me put one question out there that i think

you'll both agree on, and that brings us to the current budget deliberations that are going on on the hill. i think one of the things that we've learned that is a crucial component that complements our armed forces when they deploy are the career civilians that are at the state department and the u.s. agency for international development. they play a critical role, and i note their budget -- secretary gates has talked to john nagl and myself about this. you know, the role of the diplomatic side and the career civilians on the agency for international development turn out to be key partners in this. it's been an initiative that both secretary clinton and secretary gates have spoken to, but i'd ask just before we really get in to strategies and lessons learned the criticality and what these budget cuts may mean to the long-term effort.

>> this is, rudy's absolutely right, this is something we absolutely have not gotten right as a nation. counterinsurgency is not primarily military, as even general chiarelli's article pointed out that we drew from when we wrote the manual. unfortunately, only the military has the resources to operate in these conflict zones, and we have not properly resourced the civilian agencies who have greater background knowledge, greater and different skill sets in some of these areas. and so we're left with military forces doing this all too often. we had, i think, a remarkable opportunity with the quadrennial diplomacy and development review launched by secretary clinton very early in her leadership of the state department. the qddr, i think, makes a pretty compelling argument for more resources, not fewer, for the state department and for usaid. unfortunately, in the current budget climate it looks as if

it's dead on arrival, and that is an enormous risk to the progress, the fragile reversible gains we have made thus far in afghanistan. the budget numbers i just saw this morning, took a look at morning for the proposed cuts to the state department and to usaid put at risk all of the gains that general petraeus and his team, mcchrystal, mckiernan before them, have worked so hard to lock down for so many years. is and so i couldn't be more -- and so i couldn't be more emphatic in agreeing with secretary gates and secretary clinton that this kind of war fight, a state department foreign service officer, a development specialist from usaid may be even more important than a soldier with boots on the ground. and we've got to get this right as a nation. we have not done that yet. >> i agree with that. we've been talking about that, though, for about five or six years now. and if we warrant going to

assemble -- weren't going to assemble the political will and the courage to actually make those investments when we had a raging civil war in iraq, and if we're not going to make those investments while we've got 100,000 troops on the ground in afghanistan, i remain skeptical that we're going to get action out of congress. i agree with you, it should happen. but this is a function, i think, of having extended conflicts that go on for years at a time while at a time we've got economic troubles here at home. i really don't end i have some of our former -- envy some of our former colleagues and others in government who are trying to implement the civilian surge which i think is really an important part of what we were trying to get right in afghanistan. at the start of the obama administration, we had about 300 personnel, civilian personnel who were working for the state department and usaid. and what they, in essence, have done is more than tripled the presence on the ground to about 91100 -- 1100 at this point. i went out in the fall of 2009

to camp attar bury with jack lew, the deputy secretary of state. and this is a camp where we were finally training people who were going out to serve on prts and other things, and i think it was an admirable effort. i think it was very important. but one thing that struck me was perhaps this was a little too late and a little too late. we talk so much about having civilian agency personnel who should b be deployable, but the simple pact of the -- fact of the matter is the way these agencies are structured, they don't have the time to prepare for deployment in the way that military personnel do. i have friends who work in these agencies who are pulled away to offer training for some of these individuals, and the training program is often quite short compared to one we send our military personnel out there. you look at the budget systems and how things were handled. state department has 31/61 system for hiring short-term, temporary hires or usaid foreign service limited. these sorts of things, i think, these details are important

because not getting that straight or forcing our civilian agencies to rely on temporary measures makes it very difficult to create a strategy that is sustainable in and of itself. and i know we're going to get to the problems on the ground in afghanistan and with our afghan partners, but it's not just about resourcing. at its core it is resourcing, but even if the money were available, there needs to be a systemic rethink in the civilian agencies at this point that haven't had to deal with how do you rotate individuals in the large numbers just getting to that 1100 in terms of personnel. it took a lot of beg, borrowing and stealing. and there's tremendous talent and energy. they know the country, a lot of these people. but there are operational details how how can they get out and how well is strategy on civilian coordinated. and it should give us pause that more than five or six years into this push for smart power -- and it's been that, you know, this

wasn't a creation of the obama administration, essentially when secretary gates came into office there was a much more stronger emphasis on this -- yet we haven't done it yet. and given where we are right now in a very uncertain period in afghanistan and given where we are in an uncertain moment politically here at home, i think it's fair to raise these skepticisms that our members of the congress and senate will actually come back with even stronger support than they've not offered to this point. >> i think that's a fair comment, brian. i note that if we were talking with critical decision makers, in this case army captains or majors, or we went over and polled a class at the national defense university of u.s. service members who have served in the theater, at the top of their list of critical requirements would be more, more of the diplomatic and the usaid personnel. i think each marine that i've talked to has got a story. and so it is one of those

disconnects. and, actually, it precedes secretary gates in this tour. we could go back to the late '80s and even to the '90s in particular and find at the time the civilians and their component was called operations other than war. and it was a particular dod acronym. but one of the things in the post-combat stage that is so critical is the development not just simply of security institutions, and we'll talk about that because we should be training a police force and a military force right now, but it's creating administrative authorities that can apply justice and have remedies and that create long-term structures that have sort of make the gains that our military personnel are accomplishing now to make those gains irreversible later on.

>> let me then ask john looking back on the approximately 16 months since the president's second troop surge in afghanistan focusing on the military component, what changes have we seen that are positive and negative, what parts of the surge have worked, and what parts haven't? >> i already mentioned a little bit our ability to conduct wide area security to control increasingly with the search troops in the south. we've created bubbles of security that we are now spreading out, and it's really classic counter insurgency. we clear the taliban out of an area in a tough spot and classify the oil spot of security with commanders

breaking their team down into 12 marine teams spread across a much broader area, and then integrating them with afghan security forces so the process is working, and we're seeing good examples on the ground. there was a front page story in the post on sunday about the process they are seeing on the ground. when we resource it properly, enormously resource intensive, and the most important resource, of course, we are spending in afghanistan. the lives of our young men and women, we're at about 1500 u.s. killed in action, more than 10,000 hurt over the past two years -- 2010 years of fighting there. the brits, most the single largest foreign component of those losses, so this is slow, hard, grinding war, and it's

always been that way, and it always will be that way. that is no surprise. the -- one of the interesting things that's happened that we're seeing in afghanistan that we started to see in the later years in iraq is that our focused counterterrorism areas against tie value targets, and then as we brought more resources over to afghanistan, particularly from iraq but also some we're continuing to build our capabilities here in the united states, we're getting more unmanned orbits up and correlating human intelligence, electronic intelligence and increasingly able to target individuals very precisely. both cases against them before they are in custody, and then visit them with a much higher degree of precision than has ever been the case before. this is an innovation that i

think general stan mcchrystal is owed a lot for, and that's changing the dynamics inside the insurgency on the ground, and any time you are evaluating a combat situation, you have much greater visibility of cost on your side than what's happening on the other side, and we're starting to get a better picture of what's happening inside various taliban cells. news reports have indicated the taliban is now having a hard time replacing its mid-level leaders and people are suffered promotions and not accepting them because the life expectancy is so short. we're getting good at disassembling terror networks from outside. there are costs as well as benefits of that. a lot of those mid-level leaders are people we'd like to talk with as we work on reconciliation and

reintegration. we'll talk about that later i think, but this insight is a real innovation in the counter inser jen sigh -- insurgency and have a pretty high degree of precision, and we're so much better at it that it's almost a qualitative difference on the fight on the ground. the other key military component of the surge in afghanistan has been increased resources we poured into the afghan security forces, afghan national army up to 170,000 afghan national police, 10,000 # i -- 130,000 and bill caldwell in support of that program. we put extraordinary resources into that, about $10 billion a year right now. fair question whether that's sustainable? i don't think it's a fair question whether that's a good investment. we get extraordinary large

number of soldiers in the ground and it cost about a million a year. that $10 billion we spend on the afghan security forces this year is only about 10% of the total we're investing in afghanistan. i argue it's the most important in terms of enabling and allowing an exit strategy. we built service schools, teaching how to fire artillery, training and educating helicopter pilots, and so we are making fairly real progress in this. it's going to be a long-term effort, but i think american advisers are required for a number of years. i want to point to one of the real factors of difficulty. the literacy rates in

afghanistan are deplorable and to train people to be soldiers, we have to teach them to read and write and it's first grade level are the levels we're trying to achieve. third grade for noncommissioned officers, and it's impossible to have a modern army, even an army that fights the counter insurgency campaign in afghanistan if they can't read and write and take notes, and so if they can't read the serial number on their rifle, so interestingly, we're getting better at teaching them how to read and write and finding that's an extraordinary retention advantage that they desperately want to know how to read and write and the ability to do so and the promise of additional schooling is one of the fobbing tars that led -- factors that led to increased retention lately. we are building afghan local

police, a traditional effort in campaigns and there's a danger there's royalties other than to the aftergan government. we played this government before, and we're getting better at this process, and this pilot, i think, is showing real progress in increasing number of boots on the ground. finally, we're seeing great results with partnering with afghan units. once they are formed, we partner american nato and other allied units with them in conducting joint operations at a much higher rate than we used to all to increase the afghan's learning curve and take it a possibility that we can hand over responsibility to them in the lead for most, if not all of their country by the end of 2014. >> okay, i'm going to ask brian a question, and we're going to go one more round of long answers, and then tighten it up a little. [laughter] then we'll go back and forth. i feel like i'm back where i was

when i was a young staffer at the armed services committee andset was great -- seth was great for taking the whole time for giving answer. brian gets one long answer here, and then we will start to see the differences. you know, pakistan and then the government in afghan security forces clearly -- afghanistan clearly as hard as we're working, the questions remain. brian, you've been an election observer in pakistan and particularly most recently in the 2009 presidential elections in afghanistan, and so give us your assessment on how afghanistan's political and governance challenges intect with our own security? >> it's clear it's the toughest

part of the strategy, and we agree with it that it's massive investments -- what is it? $10 billion in the security forces when the afghan government has a budget of $3-$4 billion each r -- year. it's a question and whether this money is actually having the impact, and i think it's fair to raise the question is more better in a place like afghanistan on both the security and also on the government and economic front. i want to highlight the second piece of this because that came back from afghanistan in 2009 really struck with one central question. do we have a partner in the afghan government at multiple levels? we observed that election. i've stayed engaged on the extensive efforts to build governments and democracy and

use the electoral systems in the institutions. it sounds soft, but it's what we talked about earlier. it's the fab fabric to which the security organizations, the police and army, need to connect to at some point to sustain itself going back to the question of sustain the, and i think even more than two years into this, there's serious questions about not only the capacity, because there's challenges of capacity, but also the willingness of political tension of our partners in the afghan government. look at the kabul bank fiasco, the country's largest bank just taken over by the central bank. nearly $100 billion in assets, money used in there to buy property in dubai by the leadership in afghanistan. money was sent in these campaigns including the campaign we witnessed in 2009 to develop patronage networks in there, and

dexter for the "new york times" did great reporting on the ground and corruption no longer permeates, but it is by and large the afghan state. if we have hundreds of millions of dollars in the key bank through which u.s. taxpayer money has gone through to help pay for afghan civil servants salaries, and to pay for some of the afghan national security forces, if we can't account for that money, and this doesn't talk about all of the other flows going out there through us aid and emergency response funds, and i have yet to see a comprehensive assessment of the special inspector of afghanistan reconstruction offered sort of tactical investments, but i vice president seen an assessment of resources committed over the last two years and measuring the effects of the resources particularly on the government structures because there's a

very strong argument to be made that the strategy that is centered on the counter insurgents strategy is we're uses our resources and power as a weapon againstous inadd inventorially. we're trying to identify gaps and holes in the strategy. we have the senior adviser working on anticorruption initiatives, but there's a serious question out there which is do we have a seriousness of purpose from our afghan partners that i know most of our troops share out there, and people are serving in the u.s. government, and i think this is why we go back to that question of why can't we get political support on capitol hill? there's this question of the viability of all of this, that if the two big gaping holes that have been identified in pakistan and the afghan government and their political institutions, those two big gaping holes, if they are not addressed, does it make sense to continue on the

current path and strategy and line up with the president's stated objective of disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al al-qaeda in both afghanistan and pakistan. i know we know another panel, but pakistan, i think, is the biggest complication, and my only observation there is i fear that our strategic focus has been flipped in the wrong direction sm i know we're in afghanistan because we need to get it right. when i go to pakistan and see what's happening in pakistan every day, the news this morning they tested a surface-to-surface weapon that's nuclear. there's a serious attempt by the obama administration to enhance cooperation is breaking down to the pakistani government, and i fear that we're out of balance. i said this several times, but i feel we are focused on hamlets and villages in southern afghanistan when the real threat to u.s. national security

interests is across the border, and that there's an imbalance of resources both in terms of money and senior leadership attention. okay, so that frames it because on the one hand you got discussion of a strategy that if you resource the security side and you have enough troops in countries, they are capable of having a significant impact. on the other, you got, let's just right now for this round, focus on the vulnerability with pakistan sort of being both a gathering place and your adversary can go and hide and be protected versus a safe haven where the enemy goes across the border and because nobody is there they use the international boundary to, you know, to get

away from the u.s. forces, but with pakistan being a place of safe haven, can the clear hold bill ever work no matter how well it's resourced in afghanistan? john? >> there's now a short answer? >> short answer. >> the short answer -- hard question for the short answer. pakistan is in my eyes the most dangerous place in the world for the united states. it faces extraordinary combination of a number of internal insurgencies, the home base for al-qaeda central, weak democracy, large number and growing number of nuclear weapons as brian mentioned. it has over time, i think, come to recognize and speaking of pakistan as one entity is a lewd kris imp my cation. there's -- implication, there's wheels within wheels inside pakistan,

but increasingly i think members of the pakistani military and intelligent service and the governing elite in the country are coming to recognize that the insurgent forces that they created which they have supported in many ways as an insurance policy against an afghanistan that is ruled by india, is closely in india's orbit, that that insurance policy they funded is increasingly turning against them, and we literally daily see evidence of attacks on pakistani civilians, on pakistani government targets conducted by some of these pakistani militant groups, and so we have seen slow halting, two steps forward, one step back progress i believe by the pakistani government in terms of clearing and holding the swath river valley, promises to clear and hold north

eurziristan upset by the flooding, and a high level pakistanis to kabul to talk about president karzai about the possibility of bringing the war to some sort of negotiated settlement at the very highest level,s head of the pakistani military. pakistan is a classic friend and enemy. it is -- it's actions will ultimately likely to prove decisive inside afghanistan, and there are glimmers of hope there i think, and i'm going to be interested to see if brian thinks the glimmers are too hopeful. >> i'm pessimistic these days about pakistan, and i was more bullish say a year ago or so, and i think the break down that

we're seeing between the u.s. and pakistan on security coordination is very well, and i think it's multifaceted, and there's nothing we can do but to continue to work the issue. i mean, we will never have boots on the ground or substantial boots on the ground in pakistan. we have to work the relationships the best we can and understand the decisions that are very real within the pakistani government. we all know the civilian security divide, but there's divisions within the security agencies too, and understanding who is doing what and understanding that game i think is more essential than most of what we are doing in afghanistan at this point, and i know you might disagree with that, but from the perspective of u.s. national security interests when you look at groups and the rem innocents of al-qaeda, a range of groups with free range in pakistan, and it's not only about how they assess their own security situation and it's about who they say as force

multipliers and see the threats around them. i've been in the head quarters a number of times including in 2009, and it's clear we're not on the same page, and it's not easy for people in the u.s. government to understand what the pakistani security establishment intention is even at this face. i understand your analysis of how this visit this weekend may be an opening, but i'm not so certain at this stage because we've had previous openings and previous exchanges at this point and one of the fundamentals is, you know, the security situation itself in pakistan has deteriorated. there's this lack of coordination i talked about where we talked to senior pakistani security officials who say, look, in addition to the drone strikes, which they are in favor of with dealing with the threat, but we don't have the

coordination on the eastern side of the afghanistan border, concern that part of the strategy implemented under mcchrystal and people talked about our surge being a hammer and anvil, with our forces the hammer pushing them against an anvil in pakistan. they had the same perception that if they were to strike in certain police stations, and there were -- places, and there were a number of operations in pakistan, surprisingly, the pakistan air force conducting more bombings on themselves on the threats than we do drone strikes. there's significant costs, but there's the perception that if we're hitting the threat in pakistan inside our borders, why have you withdrawn your troops from the eastern part of afghanistan? i don't know who is correct, but there's clearly, as we implement this surge in afghanistan, a lack of coordination and a lack of common understanding of the threat perceptions, and to

answer your question, no, i don't think we'll see stability in afghanistan without getting on the same page with pakistan. we may be heading there at some point, but the recent metrics i see are pointing in the wrong directions for u.s.-pakistan cooperation. >> i want to give a shoutout to admiral mullen who worked on this hard every month. he has put enormous personal resources in this demonstrating the importance he places on it. his departure as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff later this year, one of the numerous transitions to affect the conduct of our operations in afghanistan and pakistan. we lost ambassador holbrooke and general petraeus likely to leave this year to be relaced by general allen of the marines, interesting choice in who played a large role in developing reintegration options in iraq,

general rodriguez replaced later this year, and rumors that ambassador ikenberry is rotating out. there's a lot of changes in a relatively short period of time and the relationships that those military officers have developed in afghanistan and in pakistan are some of the most important assets we have in this fight, and so that period of transition over the course of this year is, i think, something to watch very carefully. >> so, okay, so -- >> [inaudible] >> at least you're talking back and forth to each other now. when i started i said here we are, it's april 2011. bora bora with the safe hatches

of pakistan are an issue of 2001 and 2002. we've known about this problem on the pakistani side now -- it'll be a decade very soon, so we have this conflict. you know, it's almost straight out of the hollywood movie where the bad guys right across the boundary, and, you know, our respective international law, you know, we don't follow into those safe havens and sancuaries. we have the troops working hard, and on the other, there's this back door that's a problem, and so here we come up now to two dates -- july 2011 and then 2014 as the nato announced end of sort of the military phase in

afghanistan, so, you know, how do these two dates come to play, you know still given these uncertainties and this is no great i disassembling illumin illuminations. this is the "new york times" reports and bin laden only then to be waved off by the tribal leaders saying we got it from here. i think john's right, i think admiral mullen is hugely significant on his senior military-to-military relationships not only in pakistan, but in egypt, but we're thinner at the sort of the field grade officer which our so critical on the decision making, so let's take this tension point between sort of the clear hold

build on the security side, the sanctuaries and safe havens on the other and then the approaching july 2011 and 2014 decisions. how do you reconcile and balance your opportunity costs versus the blood and treasure expended every day. >> i don't think the july 2011 means much more these days other than the beginning of a transition, and it's my view we need to be serious about this transition phase and defining what transition actually means. there was a panel here a month or so ago that here we are, you know, starting the transition, but no one fully defined the metrics for what that transition actually means clearly from a security, but then importantly from a government standpoint. i'm a common line guy. i said that, and i know people dispute that, but it's a common

debate to be had and people in this administration believe that you need time lines not only to focus the minds of leaders like karzai, but also to focus the agendas and strategies of large bureaucracies that won't move so a lot of the problems that i think we talked about with the government and corruption and other things, i think if used properly and, you have to be careful about how you balance all of this. you don't want to leave the message that you're going to abandon carelessly everything we invested in for a period of time, but i think the most dangerous thing for us to do at this point is to continually go back and ask for more time because why? it actually fosters this dangerous and i think dysfunctional culture of dependency that feeds and fuels the problems we have on the ground right now, and then i do think, and i know we're not talking about the past, but in iraq there was a group of forces

that helped generate stability and iraq ownership and leadership of it and managing it and having all these pieces and attributing security success and still to this date quite limited political success to not only our own resources, but how we use those resources to motivate leaders to take charge and i think a real key component in this period of 2011 is it is a start of a transition to 2014 is how do you shape karzai and the central leadership and foster a new leadership to come after him? people are talking about this in various working groups and thinking about it. it's a very hard thing to do especially when i said we're expending a lot of resources that perhaps cannot be absorbed by a small and poor country like afghanistan. how do you focus the minds of the leaders? i think this period should be used as a period to help build the security forces, do what we can to build government because

at the core i think one question is political legitimacy in the societies and how a leader becomes legitimate, but i think there's a key dynamic here to use this moment to focus the minds of the leadership in afghanistan, the leadership in pakistan, to send a signal that we are serious about drawing down our resource support, and that means greater responsibility on your part a facilitating that through diplomacy and send a signal to our bureaucracies that are we serious about moving forward with the transition, and then importantly i think the cost is a huge issue. as we talked many times before, we can't continue to spend the levels that we've been spending in wars like afghanistan. >> this is probably the clearest point of distinction between brian and myself so far at least. stand by, there may be more, but i would argue that president karzai's mind is pretty sharp and pretty focused already. the concern i have is that he's

been playing general has been playing for the day after the americans leave, and i think that's a misinterpretation of the region of the july 11 date which i think is the beginning of a transition but viewed by people in the region as a complete pullout sort of date. i think that lisbon resolved a lot of dpeers, but i do -- fears, but i think the reality is just now being digested and perhaps the most important thing to happen in afghanistan this year is i expect a partnership declare ration between the united states and pakistan leading to a strong firm relationship between the two countries, and once that is signed and the region disassembling -- digests a long term relationship between the u.s. and afghanistan will further change the call

calculus of the players in the region. i see a long tail of our involvement in afghanistan and assistance presence long past 2014, and i think that the american people will support that as long as american casualties a low and they can see that progress is being made, and i agree that the july of this year date is the start of a draw down. i think we can have date over what the slope of that will be, but i think putting in a framework of starting think now about what that slope levels off at the end of 2014 and what that force looks like at advisers, intelligence assets, air force assets, i think that will go a long way toward helping everybody make their long term calculations for what the state of play is going to be.

>> but help me -- is the -- lisbon you are right, less emphasis on july 2011, a definite emphasis that 2014 is the end of the nato combat operations. are you saying that 2014 is a firm date or maybe just another date that's thrown out there? >> so the lisbon declaration said by the end of 2014 afghan security forces would be in the lead throughout the country, and that date actually came from president karzai as his goal and objective. i think -- some breaks coming our way, i think that is likely, but the end of combat operations as we've seen in iraq which happened in august of last year does not mean the withdrawal of all american troops. in fact, we've had 50,000 troops in iraq conducting assist missions.

there's some possibility they'll be asked by the iraqi government to stay long in iraq, and secretary gates said he's likely to view that favorably. in the same way there's a long term advise and assistance program in afghanistan with a very small number of u.s. casualties, but continuing to allows afghans to govern and secure themselves. >> okay. one of the things that's been unique about the status of force agreement in iraq is -- which was concluded in december 2008 -- is that it's almost been a formula-type exit, and it's been smooth and the transfer of authorities very clear cut. would it be your view that this security arrangemented between the united states and afghanistan would be similar and would spell out the transition from nato to afghanistan forces,

or would there be more ambiguity? >> i don't think the declaration will have that, but separate documents to be negotiated differently. this is purely a u.s.-afghanistan relationship document. the nato handover i think will be conducted in a different forum, but i do think the reason the handover has been smooth is the political situation on the ground changed fairly dramatically by the end of 2008 in iraq and allowed for the smoo draw down we've seen since then. it is going to be important that not just the capabilities of the afghan governments and security forces improve between now and 2014, but also that the taliban becomes less capable over that same time period, and we're doing good work to make that happen. >> it's not just the security agreement, but in iraq there's a separate agreement that sends a

signal of enduring support and cooperation on a range of issues including police and security work and the state department and also economic development and a range of thing. the state department, the ball is starting to be in their court if this arrangement is executed. i'm not certain iraqis will ask us to stay around for a number of political reasons related to their own environment. i think, you know, obviously the last thing i say is the differences between iraq and afghanistan today are quite substantial. you are correct in saying that the operations against the insurgency in afghanistan has had a dynamic within that insurgency. i think the real question and the second panel i think is going to wrestle with this question is whether as in iraq, has it motivated and co-oped part of the insurgency into a political process in iraq? in iraq in 2005, you essentially had no participation by most major groups in the elections.

by 2008 and 2009 in the elections, the structures were different, and i think most people understand, and, again, there's a range of issues and it wasn't just about the introduction of additional u.s. forces. there were a number of factors that at this day in april 2011 i don't see presence in afghanistan pushing the reconciliation or reintegration at two different levels pushing people into a political process nor expect that it wold when you look at processes like we've just seen in 2009 and 2010 or when you look at the rampant corruption among afghan officials and just the waste of resources. there's a substantially different dynamic which relates to both countries' different history and relations to government and presents a different challenge moving forward with long-term security agreements if we don't know who our partner will be in the long run after 2012 and 2014.

>> so, i would now like to open up the program to questions from the audience. we've got half an hour to go, and so we'll start with this gentleman against the glass wall in the corner. >> thank you, gentlemen. i'm john. i want to ask, if you mind i don't state any agency because i'm expressing personal perspectives here, but i did spend four years in afghanistan. just got back again several weeks ago. brian, my mind set is along the lines of what you are talking about, and john, i agree with what you said, but i want to challenge you on a couple key points, and that's, i don't believe we are really doing a point strategy there, and this might be something in your studies and with the officials that you talked to to explore that a bit. certainly, at the strategic level, petraeus, mcchrystal, all the strategic documents do

say that, but at the tactical operational level, it's really a stability fight because we're just never going to resource the coin fight, and i think it came out in this discussion that certainly the support we would need for the hill on this is not going to increase, so we can certainly clear and hold any place we want in the south and in the east, but the problem is having an honest broker in the afghan government as partners which i think you both mentioned, and that's not just there. the illiteracy deals not only with the soldiers, but the afghan officials and because of what's going on in the security environment, if it calls for 60 positions in let's say, for example, a district delivery program, the most we'll get 10 people and only a fee exe tent. i'm arguing we're going to be managing the problem from here, and that might be something to bring out in the discussion in

relation to pakistan. the only thing i say on the transition piece i think you're both right on thisment i think the afghans have a deep fear of what those dates mean. i think a strategic agreement helps, but what we vice president done so far is the messaging. my discussion with the afghans, they really do believe we're not going to be there long term. talk to the officials, and they say we'll be there to 2024-25 with the longer term stuff we have toot with the transition, -- to do with the transition. this is a question with some of the context i get from the field there because we're not getting the impacts we want in the counter insurgency strategy. >> brief comment? >> quickly. john, thank you for your service and the time on the ground there. to me, this is one of the huge tragedies of afghanistan that we have been there so long and that

we neglected and all be ignored the raising the afghan forces from the weak human capital left there after 30 years of war. we with clear and hold, but we have to hold with nato and u.s. troops because we don't have an afghan partner to hand off to. i would argue we're five years behind on raising afghan security forces from where we ought to be so when the political leadership in iraq decided that it was going to play the iraqi security forces, actually having a high degree of capability given the threat they faced. in afghanistan we're working from just ground level to try to build that capability, and it's one of the reasons i think we're going to have such a long tail of advise and assist as we build the afghan forces to hand off

to. >> again, thank you for your service there. great points. the question i raise geep that i started at the outset is all of these pieces, civilian pieces, investment, and i don't think we've covered this in the discussion yeast is how much does it matter to u.s. security interests at this point? i agree with john's assessment of pakistan being a very dangerous country. it changes with the dynamics i think in the middle east and yemen in some ways presents a more imminent threat looking at the perspective of u.s. homeland security, and then i'll ad lib ya too in the complicated dynamics to play out there. if you look at it from that perspective, the perspective that many people had heading in there in afghanistan in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, i think we're far aways away from what we're trying to get done. there's a disconnect i've nested in think tank groups and

organizations by the president. it identifies a clear goal of dismantle and defeat al-qaeda in the two countries, but it says we're not doing nation building. president obama stressed this again in his speech of december 2010, but then most of what we're actually doing in the documents and what a lot of what we're doing, in essence, you can fairly call -- if we're not doing it ourselves, we get others to do the nation building, but we are burying a very heavy burden with our state development firmses and soldiers to help. there's a reason why we don't debate afghanistan as we did iraq, but part of it is just the general confusion among american publics, not only the public messaging problem in afghanistan, but in the u.s., people understanding whiched commanders and other say, and there's a seeming disconnect of

why is it we're trying to grow literacy in a place like afghanistan, and how does that relate to keeping us safe from another attack? i just think it's a very hard sell in this current political environment here. >> right here. >> rachel martin with npr. i wanted to ask about u.s. efforts in bringing about peace talks and negotiated settlement that everyone agrees has to happen in order to bring conclusion to the war in afghanistan. can you talk a little about what you know of u.s. efortses to ignite these talks, and more specifically, what pakistan's role to be in the talks? should pakistan get a seat at the table, or they essentially destabilizing influence on those talks? >> i don't want to preempt the second panel, but i'll say a few things. this has been identified, this peace of reconciliation and

reintegration as part of the strategy and in the conversations with had with friends working on the issue, they study the issue, work on the issue, look at reports like the one to be discussed at this point. there have been efforts as we know that have been well-reported where somebody who claimed to be a taliban leader got into kabul and had discussions with people and turned out he didn't have that credibility that he claimed to have. i think it's very complicated, and the one question i would raise, and this is bringing the discussion back to john, is, yes, we hit the insurgency hard, but there's a question which does that detour the ability of command and control within the networks? do you make it much more difficult and impossible to create a political settlement that is viable in the long run? i think there's a general perception and people have talked about the military hitting the insurgency very hard. this would increase the calculus and motivation of the insurgency

to enter into a political process, but we've not seen that in a clear way. i think the second panel will discuss that, but why is there? is there a fracturing going on as a consequence of well-thought out and well-intentioned military campaigns, but taking us further away from our goal? the reintegration efforts i think there's been more sort of discussion and effort on that part, but i don't think it's met yet the expectations or hopes that people had say when initial investments were made in the early part of last year at the london conference. all of those pieces i think are ill-formed, and last thing is in some way it needs to connect back to the issue of government in the political system and structure in afghanistan that people often put it in some sort of isolated bubble like a peace process that we could set up, say like the dayton accords and look for models and things like this. what needs to be discussed is

that this is about pour sharing -- power sharing and getting groups that can move beyond the three no's that used to be at the front end of discussions and are now in the back end, reject violence, accept the constitution, and reject al-qaeda. what's on the table of discussions and reconciliation at high level? >> uh-huh, and brian just pointed the difference of reconciliation and integration. reconciliation, high-level political decisions. reintegration is low-level fighters. we have seen good progress on reintegration. as many as 50 decide it's not fun anymore and decide to join the afghan government and afghan security forces. i think as with everything in afghanistan, the government has not be as responsive or proactive in terms of providing

those offramps for the taliban, and i hope to see progress there. i think the reconciliation progress will be more difficult in afghanistan than iraq. in iraq, they were encouraged to reenforce the tribal security and used it, and in afghanistan, the tribes have been shattered by the many years of conflict there, and so i don't think we're going to see a single large flip as we did in iraq over the course of 2007-2008. i think we'll see a number of small flips so it will be harder, more -- it's going to put more demand on largely soldiers and having the problem of not enough sufficient resources of people schooled in it, and it is interesting at least that the lieutenant regime john allen who played a huge role in the awakening in iraq is considered to replace general petraeus. not a lot of afghanistan time on the ground, but has the

understanding of how the processes work and a real personal willingness to talk with people who have been our enemies and try to get them to come on board and come out of the cold, and that, i think, that reconconciliation integration process over the next year is going to be the key story. >> the lady back against the wall. >> thank you, kimerly doser from the "associated press." one quick comment. just got back from pakistan and sat down with the 11th corp. commander and the folks that worked with him. they talked about having close cooperation with general campbell on the border situation, and said it's better than six months ago. that might be something too. i'm an american reporter, maybe

they told me what i want to hear, but i had not heard of incidents on the border. that may be a positive sign. on the positive signs in security, what happens if this summer the white house decides to go down 25% in forces by the end of the year? is there a chance of upsetting the progress by taking too many people out too fast, and another question -- i keep hearing about the civilian surge, but the latest reports i'd heard in kabul were something like two-thirds of the embassy employees who were supposed to work outside the embassy couldn't leave the embassy because of security concerns. when i was there nobody could leave isaf head quarters either. is it time to recognize the folks you want to give the jobs to simply can't get to it and it does have to remain the province

of the military? third question -- you talked about the need to get rid of corruption in the afghan government, but what tools are available to the u.s. military or the ambassador when this is a democratically legislated government doing what it wanted to do and every time we investigate and uncover something, they up and end the investigation. that's it. >> so, kimberly, it's great to see you, and seeing you reminds us of our troops and particularly those on the medical side, but a pleasure to have you here. >> first on the second question. if you look at the dod directives put out in 2008 on irregular warfare, it made that decision in terms of military personnel will take the lead if civilian agencies are not capable, and that's what happened in iraq as you know. i wrote about this in a book i wrote in 2008 in the first chapter a guy trained to drive

tanks had to end up doing the job of what the prt was supposed to do and part is related to the issues i was talking about. it's not simply about funding. yes, that's a core issue, but even as the state department and us-aid got more money, there's a challenge they had themselves and then a management structure they have and essentially since 1998 since the bombing of the embassies in africa, they have adopted a force posture that is more risk adverse, so that's a huge challenge that has not been reconciled. the downside to going where i think your question implies we should go is the continued mill tarrization of development assistance which creates a lot of dysfunctions on the ground in afghanistan and iraq and a number of places. we know not what we do, and we often spend a lot of money and bolster certain local forces without having enough

intelligence. i think we got smarter to a certain extent, but that when you, you know, there's a big challenge i think on the civilian side of trying to scale this up, and we've not yet addressed that. if we go down that path of the military should just do this, then you continue to have problems which i think are fundamental and core to the problems of counterinsurgency generally. one being that the foreign troop presence in many places is not welcome and that in some cases causes more security challenges than they actually seek to address. it's very costly in the long run because we invest a lot more in these forces, and great point on pakistan. i'm glad to hear that news. the question i have is even if you have a quiet period of six months of cooperation, do we see -- the point i make is do we see the strategic threats, and are we on the same page? i think there's a lot of work to be done clearly. the american public statements

and the lie of cooperation that continues and endures because there are common interests there, but also those public statements made by pakistan and u.s. officials point to serious problems not yet fundamentally addressed that go back to not just tactic issues like border control, but strategic cooperation in making sure that we're on the same page, and i hope the visits this week will actually do this, and i should be quiet. [laughter] >> well, kimberly, i want to draw you on the first point because you seem to indicate american reporters want to hear good news which i never understood to be the case. i am also hearing some indications that border on both sides of the border that we are getting closer and better. i'm pleased to hear that you were told and given some indications of the same thing. general petraeus of course is staying in afghanistan through the fighting season making a recommendation to the president

on what the pace and scale slope of the withdrawal will look like. because of the discussion i had with john that the limited capability of afghan security forces to hand over to the forces that we've cleared and are now holding, i predict that petraeus and the commanders on the ground will hold on to as many u.s. and nato troops as many as they can as long as they can to hold and hand over control to military forces and continue to put pressure on the taliban. i think we'll see an interesting civil war military tug-of-war, and it's one that recognizes the constrained strain on the force and continued dollar force that brian talked about about, but also the extraordinary cost of

giving back some of the gapes that we purchased at -- gains that we purchased at such a high price. it's not putting tank drivers in charge of pmt is not that bad. when we put nuclear submariners in charge of potential reconstruction teams, that's wrong on every level. the money we up vested in those -- invested in those folks with specialized skills, but it's hard to imagine someone less imposed operating in that manner even though they are bright people. we have people who many of you know who has been working in the government support team in kamsir. he's coming back before his first child is born and there's high quality people out there taking risks, but not as many as we need.

as a nation we need a discussion whether this capability we keep discovering we need more of where we're going to make the investment as a nation, and i think the return on investment a high and just underlining the importance of that of those decisions. we got hr mcmaster, another tank driver working the anticorruption issues with the afghan government, enormously bright talented bulldog of a man, but probably not the right skill set, and we want a civilian expert working the construction problem for us. there's heroic efforts made by the folks on the ground. we have not yet build all the capabilities we need to here to apply forward and increase chances for success. >> i think it's really important for people who are making the decisions here to keep focus on the threat to the united states, and if we start talking about and making arguments related to costs and whether or not we need

to stay there because we're there, that's a very dangerous thing because it takes us further away from the reason why we are there, and i really think that, you know, there's a dangerous dynamic to talk about security gains after a year that was the deadliest year for afghan civilians, 2010, since we've been there, so, yes, as i said in the introlocalized security gains and then the reason i think it's important to go back to the focus goal on the terrorist threat because if we don't do that, we'll continue to be in the circular argument of how do we actually add more resources at a time when it's just not politically viable later in the decade to continue to do that. >> this gentleman in the front row. wait for the microphone so the audience watching can hear. >> hymn doug, want to ask two

political questions. i'll state them explicitly and comment a little. first, do we need an explicit statement or restatement of american policy from this president? john eluded to the fact our friends and enemies in the reason seemed to misread what the president said. i don't think the many parallels are helpful, but compare it to president bush's 2007 speech, you didn't walk away wondering what he said. we have confusion about what july 2011 means. both of you try to walk the president back off of that, but he declined to do so and repeats that date in his state of the union speech, and does the president need to come out and make an explicit statement of u.s. policies so that we can get cooperation from our parters in the region, and for that matter state our long-term commitments so that our enemies might relook

at their commitments and strategy. second, the afghan constitution. we've made it clear as you said, brian, that, you know, we've made a free condition acceptance of the afghan constitution, but at the same time, that's clearly a document that is couldn't have been designed better to maximize corruption despite our international community imposing that on them. as i tell people and the audience who may not understand the afghanistan constitution, picture an america where president appoints every governor and county commissioner in america, while that's popular here, that doesn't play well in idaho or georgia or in their afghan analogs. what steps can and should we take to look to do a relook at the afghan constitution? >> i'll let john take the question because he's a politician. [laughter] first, it's not a precondition anymore except with the

constitution. i think you said precondition, and that's the importance of hillary clinton's speech earlier this year which made it a little bit more open, and i don't think we fully and adequately answered rachel's question, but the next panel i think will do that in terms of what's going on, but that's an important shift and change. the point i make is this is hard to do. i raise this in my analysis in iraq quite a lot, and i thought at one point mistakenly that constitutional reform was essential and part of the key benchmarks and other things. i think it's essential for the long term viability and power sharing in a place like iraq, and i do think it's also the case in afghanistan. my own point was how do you connect the political processes and also multiple processes, some of which are driven by our own security establishment and the different committees that are developed as local levels and other things.

nobody has drawn all the pieces together and connected to the constitution which is quite broad, and then do it in a way that allows the afghans to drive this process, and that's, i think, a deeper longer discussion than simply how do we actually get to a security agreement for the longer term? all of these things need to be threaded well together. my answer to your question is we don't know sort of that pathway until we engage with the afghan leadership in the full range of it, and what they would like to do because if we are seen driving that process, we being the u.s. or the intergnarl community, then there's this problem of legitimacy. if we let them sort of lead, and i saw this in iraq and other places in political development, this is a big challenge. i saw this in egypt trying to help promote democracy 15-20 years ago. there's this sort of if you do too much yourself as oddsers, -- outsiders, you taint the

process. there's this diplomacy i have not seen yet span across the number of different administrations so perhaps less is more. >> first, doug, thank you for your service. he just spent the last year working at rc east with general campbell on the advise and assist team, another innovation that accelerated the learning process in the department of defense. i'll talk to your question about political will and political understanding here if i can. i thought that the president was very clear at lisbon. the nato secretary general who is been fantastic in building military support and the nato commander also very good, and we saw a fairly remarkable event, i thought, at lisbon in december in which the understood american disassembling parture decade -- disassembling --

bepartture date went across without a ripple in the american body politic. that i find astounding. i don't think it resounded as deeply in theater. i think they are still thinking 2011 and i don't think anything the president says or does changes that in july. when they see a lot of american boots on the ground in the fall of this year into 2012, that changes the calculus. the political elites in both afghanistan and pakistan and the region are starting to understand that america is committed for the long haul. i think that the foct that the american -- fact that the american people although public opinion polls suggest the american support around the 50% level, the support feeling is not having strong, it was not an issue in

the midterms, and what we are seeing is the american faith in general petraeus permly and in the american troops on the ground to make this thing come out to some reasonable degree of satisfaction. >> well, i want to thank both of you for participating in this discussion. one of the reasons we're doing this series is to continue a policy debate. i can't think of a time in washington when there's be as many hot baht ton issues on the agenda at the same time from the budget to debt extension to taxes to medicare and the other entitlements, and yet we have 130,000 troops that are in afghanistan. we have core policy issues there, and i think we deserve to them a continuation of the

debate that we focus on these issues and also try to inform ourselves in terms of lessons that we should be learning for the future. i know in my tenure at the pen gouge, the -- pentagon, the notion of a tenure which is likely to be 12-13 in afghanistan with a huge disruption in the middle that would be debated by historians for a generation in terms of the swing to iraq and to the neglect of afghanistan in 2004, but with our troops in the field, we're going to continue this series. i want to thank brian katulis for his contribution, and i want to thank our guest and visitor, dr. john nagl, for his comments as well. you know, i think the deepness of the discussion back and forth shows that these are two guys

who are very committed to our country's security, to our robust standing in the world, but also taking a country to war is the most consequential decision the commander and chief and congress needs to make. we thank them for their contribution. now, i ask the audience to just sort of stay in place because what i'm going to do is to hear -- >> lock the door. [laughter] >> we're going to hear from our senior fellow dr. larry who will take us in a different direction, and that is to the century foundation's report and looking at the process for negotiation and reconciliation. there's a very distinguished group here that's about to step in, so doctor, if you take the podium, we'll hand off. we'll be like a relay team and

pass it off to the next group. thank you, audience, you've been real good, and we appreciate the questions. [applause] >> i want to begin by bringing jeff up from the century foundation to give us an overview of the report and start this panel. jeff? >> thank you, lair, you have heard now for an hour and a half a discussion about the merits of counter insurgency as a way of providing a way to fix the problem in afghanistan. when the then new administration came into power two years ago and afghanistan seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket, the suggestion that counter insurgency might be a way to repair the relationships there captivated many in washington and became almost a cottage industry for think tanks to think momentarily of fixing the

situation. from century's vantage point in new york, this was perhaps a way to even the balance that was undone over the previous several years, but not likely to result in a long term peaceful afghanistan, and we embarked on a process with encouragement from the carnegie cooperation in new york to think about how we could assemble an international group, a substantial american component, but also a major international component, given that it is foreign hands for 30 years have been deeply involved in creating and propelling the direction of afghan's conflicts from the soviets to the pakistanis to the post-2001 afghanistan, and we recruited for this purpose two exceptional leaders. one who had been u.n.'s special enjoy in afghanistan --

envoy in afghanistan in the late 1990s, and then after the fall of the taliban regime, and thomas pickering who was ambassador to any place that mattered in terms of this conflict including the u.n., india, and russia, and a brilliant cast of members, three m whom will be on our panel this afternoon to look at how one would be able to find a way towards a long term peace in afghanistan. the report, and many of you may have picked up copies of this as you came in, basically looks at three questions, and they are played out in the chapters of this report. first, why bother to negotiate? it was a question that came up repeatedly in this first panel. second, what is there to negotiate? what would be on the agenda for negotiation both in terms of

afghanistan's domestic conflicts and those international hands from outside that have been engaged in one way or another, and third, how do you get a noashting pro-- negotiating process underway, and these three questions, this international task force which included folks from both allied countries and some that are not quite so alive, most of the permanent members of the security counsel had citizens on this panel, former russian foreign minister, former chinese representative to the u.n., as well as some of our european friends, and people with deep u.n. experience, and the time report has generated a good deal of interest in all of these national capitals and in afghanistan on both sides, and we think that this discussion we're about to have right now

should be quite interesting, and enlightening have in how we put afghanistan through a negotiated settlement into a long and steady course of peace and state. with that, larry, he will be moderating the panel, and then back to moderate your discussion with the members of the panel. larry? >> thank you, jeff, and let me join everybody in welcoming you here to the center for american progress and also thank the century foundation not only for producing this report, but for asking me to be on the task force. i got to tell you it was one of the more enlightening experience i had particularly traveling to afghanistan with people from many other countries in the region. our panel today consists of three very distinguished people.

first, ambassador, former e.u. representative for afghanistan and also was the personal representative of the u.n. sec tare general -- secretary general to afghanistan. ambassador was in iraq from 2000 until -- sorry, from 2000 to 2008. if you look at all of the places the u.n. has tried to broker peace, you find that ambassador vindrell has been in all places as representative of secretary general. cambodia, new guinea, and he's also been involved in the dealing with be it a personal representative to the central america peace process back in the 80s. that was an awfully big issue when i was in government. second is dr. marvin who has had

basically three careers, a professor at the university of illinois, worked in the state department in the bureau of intelligence and research, rein now he's a -- now he's a scholar at the middle east peace institute here in washington. he's the author of many, many books, and hundreds of articles dealing with this part of the world. our final panel is steve cole who is currently the president of the new america foundation and a contributor at the "new york magazine." he spent 20 years at the "washington post" and is the author of a number of books, two of which have won pulitzer prizes and, of course, the most well known is the "ghost wars, the secrets of fbi, cia, and bin laden" and followed that up with

the arabian family in 2008. if i can ask my fellow panelists to come up here, and weal begin the discussion -- we'll begin the discussion. [laughter] >> one of the toughest part of getting a negotiation going. okay, what i want to do is ask each of the panelists to spend 5-6 minutes in the beginning responding to the question and covering the points that jeff raised. on -- are negotiations possible? now is the time to do it, who should be involved, and what are the chances for success? ambassador, start with you and address the points.

>> [inaudible] [laughter] >> well, what the report is proposing is not necessarily that there should be immediate negotiations for the taliban for posing that as soon as possible there should be an exploratory envoy to go to the region, talk to the various afghan parties, and not only the government of afghanistan and the taliban, but also all the various taliban groups, but also talk to civil society and talk to parliament in afghanistan and also should explore particularly afghanistan, iran, and others

and how could talks with afghanistan or negotiations with the taliban be structured and whether there's some element of a political will to reach a political understanding of a political settlement. .. are they under pressure, or are

they not? the reasons why we think they should start immediately is because from my point of view at least, counterinsurgency is not working, and jeff mentioned that counterinsurgency was the name of the game. quite honestly, i don't think so. i think it is counterterrorism. it is obviously not working because counterinsurgency has two sides. it does the military side that it has also a political side in terms of having a government worth defending, a government that brings about the rule of law and who has improved governance, who is left -- that it is now in this hasn't happened so i don't see a counterinsurgency policy working. and therefore, we are saying a military solution by itself is not going to work and therefore what we need is to see if there

is a possibility of reaching a political settlement. because the alternatives are actually worse. the alternatives are that we have a deadline more or less until 2014. the current military approach in afghanistan appears to be to kill as many mid-level taliban commanders as possible, but there are many people who are worried that this approach will only lead to a more fragmented taliban led a younger and more radical people who might even be less willing than the taliban at the moment is or appears to be to reach a settlement and who may resist any political agreement that the elders might eventually arrived at. so, we think that this needs to happen now. now, there are many interests, many countries and people who

may be in favor of the status quo. civil society in afghanistan for a very good reason, are afraid of negotiations that might lead to a reversal of the gains achieved over the past nine years and for that, we are saying no. 14 does not necessarily mean that you were going to upset all the taliban demands and i would hope, and i think it is the hope of the office of this document, that western countries would the supporting afghan demands, afghan men and women demand, and the political gains achieved over the past 10 years in terms of human rights, in terms of political freedoms, in terms of women's rights, would he preserve. but, they are worried and they are worried about that we might suddenly pull out and leave them there.

but then there are also some interest who are respectable. there a lot of people in afghanistan making a great deal of money out of the conflict and i suspect they would not be terribly interested in reaching an agreement. there may be neighboring countries who feel that the terrorist state has kept the system rather well and that the alternative, which could the taliban control or -- in parts of the country might actually not serve their interest and then there may be other countries who may be feeling that the americans and the west will leave afghanistan to then step in. so, what we are simply saying is what we need to do, as soon as possible, is to start a process to find out where all these

various elements stand and how, if there is enough political base, how could negotiations be conducted? thank you. >> marvin, stop fighting and start negotiating? >> well actually all of us would like to think in negotiations. the outcomes most of all, negotiations leading to a political settlement. the afghans have been in a state of conflict for 33 years but it is interesting to point out that the previous 40 have been years of legal stability. as i see it, and let me begin by saying this, i believe that what we have here today despite all of the talk about negotiations that might get started, secret talks that are being conducted, my bottom line here is that the

prospects for genuine serious -- excuse me, top-level negotiations to end the war are very dim. obviously, negotiations are not an end in themselves. we have enough examples of negotiations going on between india and pakistan over kashmir or the israelis and the palestinians on a two-state solution. to prove the point that getting to the negotiations is not what it is about. and in those two cases, i submit the ingredients of an end state solution are really insight. that i don't believe can be said for afghanistan. a negotiated end to the conflict usually comes about when one party or the other seems destined to win or has lost its will to fight.

then the weaker party gets what terms they can get. vietnam is an example. another condition is where there is a stalemate. both parties with some sort of a compromise, that usually pleases neither, and then we have the koreans. northern ireland probably fall somewhere in between. in any case, successful negotiation to place not over weeks or months or years. you can get a bigger solution of course when one party surrenders in effect and unilaterally terms are imposed on it. again, i don't believe in any of those conditions apply in afghanistan today. the century foundation reports and i was not a member or involved in writing the report. i think it is premised on the

notion that there is already a stalemate or in near stalemate. there are others who want to see negotiations move quickly now who believe it is necessary because we have already lost. i don't believe that reflects the reality of what is on the ground today. i am afraid that in desperation of many in this country and in europe to find a way out, we have convinced ourselves that if we show enough dedication to finding a solution that the right mechanisms will somehow get the talks underway and good things will calm. what is supposed to facilitate this and many of the plans is a commitment in advance to a smaller military footprint. however much the taliban leadership disables talks, a growing number in this country, specially of colonists and -- columnists and bloggers think

that especially diplomats refuse to take no for an answer but point to the signs are some interest. nearly all the people that they based their conclusion on have once been associated with the taliban and the truth is that when they did, the they were not people of great influence. they were not part of the kandahar shura. i recall in the state department negotiations with the former foreign minister who is one of those interlocutor's now and maybe trying to get him and the kandahar shura to come to some agreement on the yielding for bin laden. many of those pushing the hardest for an early political outcome i believe are using a western concept, a political settlement for what you do is you trade ministerial positions, a provincial appointment and constitutional revisions.

the taliban have long indicated their disdain for the constitutional system and for the current leadership. they do not practice dissolution. in the end i submit at least the top leadership. it is often stated that the taliban are essentially pashtun nationalist and therefore have limited political ideological ambitions. and that these will, when they prevail, be demonstrated. but the taliban has always stressed from the very beginning that it is an islamic movement that transcends ethnic division. by the late 19 '90s they had made the transformation from those simply wanting as they did at the beginning, to liberate afghanistan to islamic militant committed to a higher calling. no one really expects the taliban will lay down their arms in agreement.

why then should we expect that they will disown al qaeda? they have had more than a decade in which to do just that. yet, they don't particularly like their arab allies. they never liked them but that has not led to any distance between the two. interestingly, the taliban has anyway stuck to its principles. they could be doing far more now and it doesn't surprise me that they are not. a grand bargain is achievable and talks will drag out. it was certainly a to the confusion for many afghans and others of whether they are effectively the enemy or negotiating partners. with everyone else saying that there cannot be a military solution, it may be that the taliban are the only ones who still believe in one. for the taliban leadership, the urgency for finding a political

solution is a surefire sign that we recognize that we are losing. and in preparing the lead and there is no reason to pretend to come from ice. the simple fact is the taliban leadership in pakistan believe that it is winning. their country may be hurting. this winter and spring and kandahar hausfeld on but this has never disturbed them in the past. we found that when we apply sanctions before 9/11, that the more we squeeze the leaders, the more they felt their state was being challenge. our earlier negotiations with the kandahar shura found them believing that time and god were on their side and you certainly don't compromise god's will. i believe this karzai is indeed wanting peace like most other allies. certainly he would like to see an end to the fighting and enhancing his own reputation. but i don't believe he really

believes in a deal. he is too clever not to understand that he is not likely to survive any real power sharing arrangement. his high peace council is window dressing to keep the ethnic minorities, the other ethnic groups, from thinking that he is going to strike a deal behind their backs. karzai's endgame is that i appealing to the peacemaker and at the same time holding on to his loyalists he puts himself in the best position to survive once the international community deserts him or pushes him out and he believes both of them. the united states at the same time cannot afford to stand in the way of diplomatic, of his diplomatic process that we have been hearing about. be accused of being the spoiler. now we can't have, we can't have a long-term relationship,

military relationship basis or a strategic relationship and have reconciliations. is what it is one or the other. all this said, looking for a political solution is what we should be doing. but notice that i use the plural. negotiations must be pursued i believe on a tactical level rather than in a strategic level. that is with local agreement and immigration is not a -- involved integration and that that is not a grand bargain with the shura or haqqani network. it is with the and lower level taliban. the insurgency are is being stained and so are the solutions. until now the discussion about what effect might go into negotiations have been the terms of a leads to a league. not reflecting the interest of

civil society and the public at large. any success politically is likely to come village by village, militia by militia but only in the event that there are military gains that people believe in. we are not there. negotiations are not a substitute, and military victories of course our unsustainable without improvement in people's lives and services and their freedom from predatory abuse of government. their access to by their governments and above all the rule of law. in conclusion, i don't know if this is still possible. the odds against a blaze in the country much less receding the insurgency is a long one. we got a late start. with our enemy and right now we sometimes are her own worst enemy with our assistance

policies. it is a rotten government that karzai leads. there is going to be difficult to building an afghan security force, the sanctuary in pakistan makes it all the more difficult. may be an possible. at the same time, the consequences of failure in meeting our objectives which involve global terrorism, regional stability, those are objectives and the consequences of not meeting them i think are rather frightening. let's not fool ourselves into believing that there are any current plan b's plans out there that are benign. the best we can hope for at this moment at least his coming close to realizing our objective with the counterinsurgency, a comprehensive counterinsurgency. we need to give it every opportunity to prove itself

indefinitely. i fear that we are likely to lose the war here before revisit in afghanistan. >> thank you marvin. steve you were the first one to break the story about negotiations going on since you have been in all kinds of things. we have the pakistanis going over to afghanistan to talk about a common front. we have seen afghan officials confirm these talks are going on. a are they still going on? are they serious? as is the way we ought to be going? >> i think they are still going on. they haven't delivered yet a framework for substantive negotiations and i don't think either side knows in the end whether the vision of offshore formal negotiations that would include the taliban having for example a political office that

was protected by agreement over the negotiating parties for example or representatives could turn up and speak in some sense for the taliban leadership. whether that is going to come together not. i know that there is an intention more this year than in any previous year since 9/11 to try to construct such negotiations, but my impression is that the talks about talks have almost reached that point that you remember from your eighth grade dance, you know, we are there are like two groups of people loved the while talking to each other about what might happen and then somebody looks at their watch of the whole evening is over and nothing is quite happen. so i am not sure whether -- with the answer to your question is but i would just tried to add to the good and quite different framing remarks that we have heard so far coming at it from a third perspective.

i think rather than passing confident judgment i respect the two differing judgments we have heard on whether or not counterinsurgency per se is going to succeed or whether it is failing, whether it needs more time. i would to start with a different way of attacking the same question which is to observe that in the counterinsurgency field manual it is a fundamental premise as any practitioner or tourist of counterinsurgencies worldwide would know that 80% of intended effects are political. so that is the nature of counterinsurgency. it is meant to be a political doctrine. so the question in afghanistan is what is the nature of the politics that what ring counterinsurgency toward succese success. and i think in afghan, rather than talking about it abstractly i think they're a couple of models to think about. one is the model that i believe

the command certainly has great direct experience with, which is the model transported out of iraq and out of the surge in iraq and now in an adaptive way is being laid down an afghan conditions. now, in that model, politics is as marvin argued, local and based on militia-based security, local militias security, local policing. and where their there are negotiations with the enemy, they are done at the unit level under the rubric now and the american jargon of her integration and sometimes confusing i think even for think-tanks to distinguish between reintegration and reconciliation but they are intended to describe two different kinds of negotiating with the enemy. reintegration is the process similar in ddr programs in africa where you bring particular armed groups into particular local disarmament settings and convert them into

other jobs, train them, a variety of methods and then reconciliation refers to strategic negotiations with the enemy leadership. now those two processes are not mutually exclusive in principle and an african in african settings for example, they are often going on simultaneously. but in this case, the model that has been emphasized coming out of iraq has excluded strategic negotiations in part because they didn't go on in iraq really. we didn't negotiate with iran about the future of sadr's status in iraqi politics for obvious reasons. and so there is a mindset that emphasizes local militias and reintegration as the best form of politics to carry out the counterinsurgencies premise that most of the successful effects of counterinsurgency are political. now, i have talked about how well that applies in an afghan setting. i won't dwell on them but i just mentioned the idea that an

approach to security in afghanistan after 30 years of militia violence that is premised on the creation of more local militias just kind of begs a little bit of skepticism. the second model though that i think it's worth considering and which i do think informs the century foundation's work and which i do think is also still under consideration by central command and by certainly others in the obama administration is the model suggested by the soviet exit strategy which it essentially tries to blend reintegration, of local militias, defections with a kind of ballast of regional diplomacy, the geneva accords being sort of the regional diplomacy on steroids, and some strategic negotiations with sections of the enemy. in the context of the regional

diplomatic effort. now, this is not 1989 and it is not 1999. this is afghanistan after 10 years of very heavy international involvement, very heavy outside capital flows, extremely confiscated sets of distortions inside the political economy. none of these models really are adequate you know in a box, but i do think that the idea of strategic negotiations integrated with other politics is a better way to approach the question then just to consider it in isolation. i guess that was the point i wanted to make on that. is there an empirical basis to justify the pursuit of negotiations with taliban senior leadership? marvin says no. i want to offer some evidence on the other side of the question. first. first of all what we mean when we talk about the taliban? they are fragmented.

obviously we are not talking about the islamic emirates any more. we are talking about an organization that includes aging leadership of the old islamic emirates that is mostly present in an entity that they best understand as the sure about is itself not exactly a transparent or well-established organization. then there are allied militias, some of them substantial and important like the haqqani network. others less substantial and less important but still under arms and then they are there are local militias under commanders in the field who may be appointed and may have no allegiance to the sure about actual susceptibility to command-and-control is varied and susceptible. so if you ask in that mix who is it that would be susceptible to turning up at the uae political office or in istanbul political office we are really talking about the graying generation of

the islamic emirates. some of its ministers elements of the shura who have been the ones who have been signaling interest. now, what they actually come forward? i agree it is unknown. now, why would they be interested? one is a generational divide. they are now at that time of life where driving in cruisers into kandahar and having an 80% likelihood of being struck by a hellfire missile in the next 30 minutes is not as appealing at 50 as it was at 25 and they think there is clearly, as you see often in these kinds of insurgencies, one grouping of generational leadership that is interested in another way of doing things. there is also 10 years since 2001 of pakistani koresh and that has clearly animated sections of the older generation

that is stuck in panostand, dependent on isi for passports, dependent on pakistani tolerance for the license to run a t stall, to rent a home. everything about daily life and now they have children and cousins and brothers and everyone is subjected to pakistani permission and afghans as anyone knows are fiercely independent and especially the taliban having been in power for some years but wish to restore their own independence. and i would say also it is important to take note that while they were not very significant reconciliation has already occurred. sections came in under colin al-asad's khalilzad membership. they are now sitting in kabul. they were sort of the targets of opportunity as we saw in 2,042,005 groups in the islamic emirates but only lightly tied to the senior leadership at the model of successful reconciliation is already

established in a number of significant cases. other undeclared but nonetheless reconciles taliban already make up part of the body politic and in the army of afghans. people change sides in the fall of 2001 without necessarily advertising it to the ambassadors. and then finally, the quite a shura does communicate and successfully negotiate tactically already in afghanistan humanitarian aid is negotiated routinely in afghanistan, safe passage and my impression from talking with the humanitarians who rely on direct exchange with taliban leadership about access to particular territories is that the quite a shura can deliver on his promises about 80% of the time. i'm not sure i would want to drive the jeep but that is essentially an indication that this is not a -- that they can deliver even in areas where they are dealing with young commanders.

now by which you take these risks? marvin said provocatively provocations do not amend themselves. i do think there is an objective that is achievable even through partially successful fragmentary negotiations of the type that for examples example surrounded the darfur conflict for years. it went nowhere in a strategic sense but in a tactical sense broke off factions and achieve the objective of what her take a what her take a late reduced violence and by reducing violence, they created a permissive states for other politics and traditional counterinsurgency effect. so the objective would be to reduce violence and then to use that violence to extend other successful clinical and military strategy. now i will just and then by stepping out of the case for trying this. and emphasized that it is these

other political tracks, other political solutions and there i agree with what martin said during the end that negotiations cannot be seen as a political strategy. they have to be seen as one element of a much broader and more determined and more resilient political strategy. in general it would be in the interest of the international committees and afghans to migrate energy and investments from military operations toward political operations for the purpose of securing afghan unity and stability for the purpose of reducing the direct role, the unsustainable role in direct combat now played by international forces. those other political tracks are probably looking out over three or four years more important than strategic negotiations but nonetheless defending and i would quickly tick them off. it would include you no transition beyond president karzai's term successfully, the prevention of his usurping the

constitutional term limits that now confront him. most of the afghan opposition was afraid that he was going to break the parliamentary elections and to lay the seating of the parliament for the purpose of securing permission to extend his rule. now they fear something else, which is the use of jirga politics and kind of extraconstitutional negotiations and prophecies as an end run around the electoral process in the transition. it would be a tragedy if the attempt to negotiate at any level even reintegration, created a space for the president to run around the constitution. parliament and with the international community's rare unified and successful support was needed, was defended, now is flawed but independent for political activity in afghanistan and must be permitted to advance in that role and protect it. and i think those kinds of

processes, which also require international diplomacy, regional diplomacy and direct negotiations among afghans and supporters have to be understood as the more important track in which these other kinds of negotiations with the taliban should he seem. >> thank you, steve. you had a great short opening statement which set the stage for your colleagues to comment on. at me ask you to follow up and deal with some of the points they raised and in particular the question is if we start it will it end up like kashmir for example or somebody negotiating from a position of weakness, it can only be done on the local level? i mean, basically, how would you respond to the objection particularly raised by marvin? >> well, first of all, the they are not incompatible and in many situations, and the report

doesn't suggest otherwise, one can continue that military operations while poe sites and i'm sure the taliban would want to do the same, while at the same time talking and trying to find an agreement. second, the kashmir example is a bad one because india and pakistan have not been talking on kashmir, have been talking past each other and there has been no serious attempt by the international community to push the two sides towards a meaningful discussion and agreement. you can argue that the middle east is also failed not because they are working. because they are not really working and of course i entirely agree that it is not for the -- it is to achieve a settlement. now i cannot suggest now what kind of assessment would it be. i would hope that we would all be working to ensure that i

repeat, the gains achieved over the past 10 years are maintained so, i also -- when you talk about taliban while they were in power, the crisis is a quite different situation. i was an envoy to them between 2,002,001. now then, essentials did not have any perks because they were in power. now we are not talking about the situation where they are under severe attack, military attack, where they are being squeezed by their pakistani patrons and where i would imagine, that there believes in being able to start all over again in 1996 seems to be pretty unlikely. but i repeat, and one final

point. i am very sorry that a couple of years ago the term reconciliation came in. reconciliation is a misused term for what we are trying to say an afghan. reconciliation in afghanistan means forced to the taliban. if you like negotiations with the taliban. it traditionally happens after a peace agreement and there is reconciliation at the lower level. so talks at the high level. i don't believe that it is going to be feasible to have talks at the lower level as you suggest that will deliver these results. it will lead to an atomization of afghanistan and don't forget that we have an enormous number of missions and groups which may continue the fight on the ground even if there is a political

settlement. >> let me follow that. of all of us here you no president karzai the best. do you agree with martin's characterization of him? what is he really concerned about? >> well, you know i've known president karzai since before he became president and i have had, i used to have and i still have a great deal of respect. now he was pushed into the position. he was put in that position as the international community hasn't decided to use the northern warlords to a pashtun --. after he was appointed he was not supported in the way that he deserved. the u.s. in particular but to some degree also the europeans and the u.n. basically said to him, you have to deal with the warlords. we made no attempt to disarm or

disband the warlords, the very people who had brought ruin to afghanistan before the taliban took over. and, slowly he has adapted to the situation in which he is dealing with some very nasty characters. now i think we don't need to go back to know that power corrupts and i think there has been an element of corruption, not so much in him but in terms of his family. and the danger is that both he and the person who is not mentioned but is very much a powerbroker who is a top warlord and probably someone who committed serious war crimes or crimes against humanity is now his right-hand man. this has become the family of the two have become a kind of -- which is going to be much more difficult to remove. not so much because president karzai himself wants to stay in power but because he wants to protect the business interest

and interest acquired by the two families. >> steve you know a lot about the taliban and bin laden. do you agree with what marvin said about if the taliban really would like to bring that al qaeda or basically at the same way they did before 9/11 given what has happened in the past decade? >> well i agree that there is no evidence that the taliban has ever made a hard decision to repudiate al qaeda and they have had opportunities. they have had incentives and have been urged. there are a number of occasions when some taliban actually has you hear in the accounts of internal discussions and very assure a's some taliban have openly argued it is in our interest to comply. but mullah omar has never sanctioned such a decision and there's never been a coalition within the quetta shura that has been willing to take that decision. now, you can argue about why that is. we don't really have great

evidence about their internal discourse. the fragments support some of what marvin said is certainly a compelling account of mullah omar at various points saying i have two answer to eternity and i'm simply not going to be tried someone or an organization that i believe is righteous for the sake of non-muslims but they're also more sort of realist arguments that sometimes seem to get hoisted in the so essentially it is an untested proposition as to the current setting that there is an historical basis to be skeptical about mullah omar in particular. now that leads you to the view that i think is current in the obama demonstration and was current last year and the last time i knew, that you almost have to find an extra mullah omar strategy if you want to have any hope of breaking off sections of the quetta shura and actually exploiting the indication, the clear indications that they are providing that they are interested in negotiations under

circumstances -- circumstances. separating mullah omar from the negotiations in theory shouldn't be impossible since he is not really as i understand it very much present with the shura from meeting to media -- medium and anyhow. exactly what his status is his industry elvis lee. but you know i do think if you you are asking the question about what their conduct in the period from 1998 until you know, 2002, that was an heir of where mullah mullah omar's decision make it was much more centralized and that was hypothesized would go on here. >> marvin if you could take a couple of minutes to what you want to respond to but address the points raised about maybe a soviet exit strategy type of deal, has that been in it at all with some of the things you talk about rather than sort of kashmir and the israel-palestine? >> well, i think the evidence is

that however important he is and certainly not day-to-day operations talking about mullah omar. nevertheless all of the elements do pay homage to him and that continues to be the case. he still is a man who commands great respect not only among the core elements of the taliban but even with the pakistani taliban. so, certainly with the haqqani family, but again we don't know. i think the problem here with this divorcing the two is that if they were to come in with a pledge that they would distance themselves from al qaeda al qaeda and the conditions are not going to go away necessarily, a question he would ask is why should we believe you? maybe this is simply a tactical

device to get their kind of settlement. but let's assume now that they are sincere and let me introduce an element which we haven't discussed and that is what probably would be a showstopper for various kinds of reconciliation, and that is the northern minorities. they made it very clear here that they are very suspicious of any kind of issue and that indeed they are prepared to fight if necessary. certainly the hajj are a group which has a kind of let feud with the taliban would be most likely to do so. my point here is that we haven't spoken about the possibility, the very real possibility because they are heavily armed of a civil war. and in that context, whatever

might be agreed to by any parties here could very well be put in fa and at least 12 this war goes on and i think when we get into that, probably whatever agreement was reached would be largely null and void. at that stage, when the taliban find themselves conceivably involved in a proxy war which will involve iran and russia and its clients and india very likely will be involved as well, it in fact kind of setting can you imagine mullah omar or whoever is saying now to the radical islamic community, be it lashkar-e-taiba, pakistani, jihadi group or any including, including osama bin laden, can you imagine saying no, i made a pledge here that i wasn't going

to depend on you. that seems to me foolish, because at that point in time, in the conditions of where he is involved in a civil war he is going to be looking for whatever support he can get from any source he can get it from. >> we have got to get to questions. >> i want to hear ambassador vendrell but just on that mullah omar subject, under the bob woodward rule that if you talk to a journalist it is off the record and then you pass on that ground rule to come off, i would say that i had lunch with ambassador holbrooke last year and he said in the course of discussing this very subject, if i could kill either osama bin laden or mullah omar at this stage i think it would be more productive to kill mullah omar.

>> the okay. on that happy note. >> i would disagree with him. i think that mullah omar, despite what one thinks and knows about him, can be -- eventually of the other settlement which probably no one else could, and second on the issue of taliban and al qaeda, i have no idea as to the reply but one thing i know, if i were taliban i wouldn't give this in advance. there are two cars to taliban will hold in any talk. one with the fact that they are fighting and to their links to al qaeda. you don't give that up until there is a settlement because they also want other things. >> jeff we are now going to turn it over to questions.

scheffel moderated and pleasing your questions make it short as quickly as you can. we would like to give everybody a chance to get in and also identify yourself and ask the person that you would like to answer the question. .. >> what extent does what go on

with the american presence in iraq where we pledged to pull out at the end of the year reflect how afghans see the relability of the withdrawal. the questions next? yes. please, identify yourself. >> for all -- >> from? >> independent tv producer. >> okay. >> i wonder by all this afghanistan and pakistan and middle east and with all this and no timeline really or potentially and could extend forever and really i don't understand the mission, first of all, what's the purpose? second is if you're talking corruption, you always name other countries that have the corruption and officials and

military being, but there's corruption right here in the united states, and so you can see they can have a resource -- it doesn't seem right. >> okay. what's the real mission purpose r and the question of purpose not just afghans. >> last would be is there modern democracy when we don't have democracy here or try to find somebody in other country who can work with somebody here? >> thank you. right behind you. >> i apologize those in the room i asked the previous panel. >> can you stand up. >> sorry. i'm rachel martin with npr. you talked about the influence of the pakistani government over theal --

taliban. what should the role be in the negotiation if any, thank you. >> start on the mission in corruption and pakistani role? starting with you. >> well, i think that for one is simply trying to find out if there's enough -- there is enough conditions to start talking or even while one is talking. i don't think it's impossible statement to be having discussions with the african government about a strategic partnership. for as long as it is clear, this is something that would happen if talks with the taliban were to fail. in other words, this is not a commitment to stay put or to have permanent basis, but this is something that would have to

occur if there was no peace settlement reached, so it's a slightly different thing. on corruption, the importance of it is not what we think about corruption in afghanistan. the important thing is what the africans feel, and the after africans feel even though they are used to corruption in the past, they feel the level of corruption achieved at the moment is intoll rational, and this is the delegitimizing the government. what we say in the report is we need to have them deeply involved. they are going to be an important part of any talk, any negotiations. they will have, and it is essential that they buy into the talks and into the final outcome, but at the same time, talks must not be done through pakistan. they should not be the way we approach the taliban.

>> it would be a path to file your if we allow the pakistanis to negotiate on the half of the taliban, and that's the legitimate interests if a stable, politically durable afghan settlement, and one reason is because taliban leaders at ever level where they've been able to talk about this issue in some kind of independent way emphasize that their own credibility as negotiators, as people capable of making a bargain and holding to it with other afghans is instantly undermind if their after gap counterparts see them merely as a approximatey strategy --

proyx strategy which they suffered under that label for a long time. >> i think we all agree that pakistan has to be at least involved if there were negotiations, but i also think we have to recognize there's at least some of pakistan's interests here which are not comparable with u.s. interest and the interest of nato at this point, and those would be effective here. the pakistanis interestingly have come to recognize, and i think it has to be seen as part of this, is they don't trust the taliban. we assume -- we often simply put them together or they are their protecters, and therefore it's a question just of whether they are speaking for them or have coordinated the efforts in

advance. what the pakistanis want out of the negotiations is they want a postured force in kabul, but they don't want it to have a free hand. they want to have that force in a way checked or deluded by the other groups, and in that way, they can be sure their basic interests are taken care of, and that includes, of course, a downgrading of the indian influence in afghanistan, and at the same time they will not have to face that coib that blow -- could be that blow back if the taliban were to gain there, which i believe they would, and find their interests are really far more akin to the pakistanis. >> let me pick up your point about iraq because i think it

got lost. one of the reasons we have problem in afghanistan is because we took our eye off of the ball. if, in fact, we try to stay in iraq, it's going to undermind the negotiations again in pakistan. i agree -- i mean, in afghanistan. i agree you should not give it away, you know, right in the beginning, but if you send a signal that you don't keep that agreement, particularly where there's people in iraq who didn't want you there, i think that's going to have an impact on the negotiations, so i don't think anybody's focused on that at this point. >> thank you, larry? >> gentleman in the fourth row. >> i'm joseph, a private citizen from chicago. my question regards the much wanted and now never heard about northern alliance. they are armed, assume they are armed, what is their role in any

fighting on conflict with the taliban, and also has there been any good effort or good success in creating the afghan security forces with a larger element to them? >> okay. in the front row here please. >> i'm dan caldwell. i want to ask dr. korb and ambassador vendrell what the biggest surprises were for you in your service here on this commission. >> and all the way in the back? >> one question i have is that -- >> name. >> bill goodfellow, cementer for international policy. what incentive does the karzai international circle have to cut

a deal or negotiate, an ultimate deal to have the americans leave? they are getting extremely rich. dexter's piece is staggering on the amounts of money they are stealing and that creates the incentive to keep going, and the last thing they want is the americans to wind down the war because the gravy train stops. how do we stop that train? >> thank you. northern alliances role and posturization of the forces and biggest surprise, and bill's karzai's incentives. >> my biggest surprise was the dysfunction of the american team. you know, dick holbrooke was still alive and wished mcchrystal was back, and in other words, just looked like we did not have a common position

over there. you heard about it, but when you hear about it from members of the parliament and members of the opposition and from everybody else, that was not only surprising, but disheartening. >> i'll talk about the northern alliance. first of all, it's not that much of an alliance. it's a term which is carried over from the time when they were fighting the taliban. if you look at its composition here you would find most of the elements in the alliances, many of the projects, and hazara group and they play a large role in the ana, afghan national army, and in the event of a civil war, that army will immediately break up and portions of it will become the fighting force for what is --

what will be if we wish to call it, the northern alliance, but i don't hold out much hope for it because it's lacking one important element, and that is it doesn't have a leader. certainly general who was the leader in the 1990s who is dead now in no way demands the allegiance, and i wouldn't even trust him in the civil war because of his own holdings, but ultimately because it is a fractured group, my guess is that eventually the taliban could prevail and complete the job that they failed to do in the late 90s and up until 9/11, so let me add though in the

interim, we will have ethnic cleansing. we will have a very bloody affair, and something nobody is talking about. we'll have 2 million refugees who will be making a bee-line for pakistan which is ill equipped to absorb any afghan refugee at this point. >> steve? >> well, i certainly, you know, worry about the unbalancing effects of the transition and even of the negotiations with the taliban because the civil war is something that afghans themselves worry about for good reason given their recent experience with it. i don't think it's likely, i don't. i do agree what we used to call the northern alliance is fractured, divided. in fact, it's been corrupted by the government and other alliance stands to the presidential opposition and

presidential palace. the army is the most important way to measure this question, and i do think that there's a lot of hedging going on an a lot of use of international investment in the ana to try to prepare against the possibility of being back in a civil conflict, and there the recruitment into the officer corp., is a concern for those leaders of the northern groups that are thinking about the possibility of having to fight another civil war against the taliban which would be serving again as a proxy for the pan stan army, and that is they don't want to build a cue into the army in such a conflict, so they'll decide which officers rise up inside the army and build internal networks within. if you are them, you want the

broadest possible front to defend against a second war against pakistan essentially which would be one way to think of a structurally. they are going to have partners in that war. india will be a much better resource than it was in the 1990s and more committed. russia and iran will be supported. they don't have strategic dust that they had in the 1990s, and there's a young body of afghans that will resist the taliban in such a setting. they can build out a stronger coalition if they are demanded to fight that war, but it requires caution about building in officers from kandahar and other places where they imagine they are going to have trouble monitoring the loyalty of those groups. >> well, i don't think we have -- in terms of the northern alliance, i think a precondition in my view to having an e event

settlement is what are the objectives according to the taliban, what would be the outcome, what would be the red lines? we saw that. it is going to be very difficult so in this period while perhaps the special envoy is trying to work out the mechanics in the structure, there should be a parallel effort perhaps led by the u.n. and afghanistan, led by ngo's or whoever to build up a consensus. at the moment, it does not exist. just as we also need, and bill alluded to it, we need to ensure that at one point the african government and the u.s. government speak with the -- from the same time sheet when they address the importance to the taliban. now, how could -- i mean, i think the way to persuade the

government of afghanistan at the end of the day as someone suggested here was not terribly interested in reaching an agreement with the taliban. some talk and others talk about talking and the other is to agree to a settlement, but i think that there are enough ways as we have seen now, enough ways for the u.s. and for the europeans to say to the president karzai you will be on your own by -- i don't like dates, but since 2014 was mentioned, i think he would need to feel that areas that this is a position that will happen, particularly if there's no reforms within the afghan government. >> one last round of questions. oh -- >> oh, as for my bit of the suprise was to find that all we so easily reach agreement on the

conclusions of the report despite our different nature. >> let me just follow-up with one question to mark's point about -- marv's point about the splitting inside the afghan state right now and some who would from the northern alliance go to the civil war. who would be bankrolling? right now we are, and the afghan army far beyond the afghan's ability to pay for it. where would a kind of rebel, you know, force that is not going to concede anything to the taliban get its funding? >> well, i don't think it's going to get that far. probably you would have this break up long before you actually got a formal agreement. they wouldn't wait that long, so as far as the funding for the northerners, i think that's very clear. all of the other parties are

prepared to fund them if that's what it's going to take to keep an asendental ban from emerging. i anticipate a larger role on india's part, even perhaps to put in military advisers. the fragmentation of this is ultimately going to make this still an uphill climb for the northern alliance, but i don't suspect that money is going to be the object here. >> well, i just point out that our task force in india explored precisely those questions and grudgingly, reluctantly, they seemed to recognize that if the choice is as settlement in which they get some guarantees against taliban control versus renewal of a war in which they are trying to support the antitaliban, trusting all to the

god, the most fickle god, that the former is the best question. >> but they have to see what the terms are. >> right, an owl sides to end this war. thank you for your participation in this program, and thank you to the panel. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> in your computer this afternoon at 5 eastern,

joinbooktv online for a live conversation about iran from george washington university here in washington, d.c.. the founder of human rights in iran talks about "the golden cage. she talks about three brothers, and that's a live stream, three brothers, three choices, one destiny at 5 p.m. eastern on booktv.org. >> tonight on c-span, a look at the news industry and you'll hear from panelists from news and commentary and what happens when they converge. >> most smart people i know are not listening to nancy pelosi for the world view or john boehner, and most smart people don't go home at night and talk

about continuing resolutions to fund the united states government of the maybe it's different in the room. >> not in my house. [laughter] >> and we forget that. i mean, most -- [laughter] >> i mean, the people you know, let's be honest, you're conservative about some things, you want your taxes to be low, but if gay guysment to get -- guys want to get married, what do you care? why is it in the media we have to red team or blue team in >> watch this event from the new orleans lit -- literary festival tonight on c-span. >> tonight, a discussion of race in america. they'll talk about academic disperties between children of differing races and districts in the country as well as how they they student achievement can improve.

>> we used to hear debates about affirmative action and people said why do we need a program? we had a program to exclude people. you have to have a program to counter the program you had. it's not just some osmosis that excluded people. it was intentional, and you vus intentionally correct what was wrong. >> watch this event from the aspen institute tonight at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> it is no more, no, don't take it away, please, what are you doing? i give you the ipod nano. [laughter] >> see this monologue and mike day see comments on the world as he sees it. the life of steve jobs and apple

and technology. >> all my monologues come from my obsessions that are in collision with one another. >> find out more sunday night on c-span's q&a, and you can down load podcasts of q&a available online at c-span.org/podcast. >> let's meet one of the top winners in this year's student cam competition. this year's theme asked to produce a video on an event, issue, or topic to better understand the role of the federal government. today, we go to knoxville, tennessee to talk to one of our second prize winners,ani, an 8th grader. how are you doing? >> i'm doing well. >> why did you choose tax policy? >> well, it was a timely issue, and it was a really big decision for the federal government in

washington that affected just about everyone in the country. >> what did you learn from the people you interviewed? >> well learned that the tax code is really something people need to take seriously and understand thoroughly. >> what do you think about the state of the economy right now? >> i think the economic storm that we mention in our documentary is beginning to subside, and i think that the sun will shine in a couple months or so hopefully. >> how important is compromise in deciding economic legislation? >> i think it's the key factor louse those plans that congress had had their pros and cons, but they really needed to get the best of both, and i think that's expectly what happened. that's the key factor. >> how is this compromise affected you and your community? >> it's definitely affected us because the increase in available spending money has just about affected everyone in the entire country and not only us, but everyone, and i think

it'll definitely help us out of our hole we dug ourselves. >> if you were an elected official, what would you have done differently? >> nothing because it turned out great, but i think if i probably favored the republican plan because as president obama and professor bruce said in the documentary, the millionaires and billionaires in our country really make up a big chunk of our economy, and if they were forced to pay more money through taxes as president obamamented to, then our economy does slow down even more. >> what did you learn from the documentary? >> the tax code is something that's really important and the federal government affects everyone not only through taxpayers, but the economy in general. >> what is the message you want to share with people through your documentary? >> well, i think we really want to share that the federal government has a really big

impact on everybody's daily lives through not only taxes, but the economy in regime. >> ani, thank you for talking with us today. >> thank you. >> and now here's a brief portion of ani's documentary, calming the economic storm. >> by ensuring americans have more to spend, save, and invest, this legislation is adding fuel to an economic recovery. >> they were tasked with this expiration date, this artificial what they call sunset at the end of the calendar year at the end of 2010. >> unfortunately, congress was divided on the topic. >> president obama developed a compromise. >> we should permanently extend the bush tax cuts for all families making less than $50,000 a year. that's 98% of the american people. >> opposed to the minority view, republicans view extending the tax cuts for the population was

the way to go. john boehner was the leader of the republican effort to convince congress to extend all of the bush tax cuts. >> i think extending all of the current tax rates and making them permanent reduces the uncertainty in america and help small businesses begin to create jobs again. >> you can see this entire video and all the winning documentaries at studentcam.org and continue the conversation on our facebook and twitter pages. >> this year's competition asked students from across the country to consider washington, d.c. through their lens. today's second prize winner understood an issue to better understand the role of the federal government. >> december 31, 2010 was a very important date for the federal government and the people of our country. major changes in the tax policy would be made. these changes could possibly increase the amounts of money paid by the citizens to the

federal government. the bush tax cuts were set to expire on december 31st, 2010, and congress had to decide whether they were going to extend them or let them expire. so, what are the bush tax cuts? the reduction of taxes passed by george w. bush as part of the economic growth and tax reconciliation act of 2001 and the jobs and growth act of 2003. in 1999 and 2000, our economy was running a budget surplus. president bush thought tax cuts were a good idea to stop increasing the surplus and give more back to the consumer. >> by ensuring americans have more to save, spend, and up invest, we are adding fuel to the economic recovery. >> they were taxed with thissics pir ration date, this artificial what they call sunset at the end of this calendar year.

>> unfortunately, congress was divided on the topic. president obama developed a compromise. >> we should permanently extend the bush tax cuts for all families making less than $250,000 a year, that's 98% of the american people. >> as a posed to the majority democratic view, republicans believed extending all the bush tax cuts for the entire population was the way to go. john boehner was the leader of republican effort to convince congress to extend all of the bush tax cuts. >> i think extending all of the current tax rates and making them permanent will reduce the uncertainty in america and help small businesses begin to create jobs again. >> however, democrats were in a stalemate. some sided with president obama while others endorsed republican ideas. one thing everyone in congress was concerned about was middle class families, 98% of the

population. if the republican plan had been realized, middle class families would have got fiscal relief now, but after several years, the deficit would ski rocket to $3.3 trillion. obama's compromise provided relief for middle class family, but once the cuts expire for 2% of the population. experts on the subject saw this as a problem. >> the thing about percentage of income earned by the top 1% or small percent of the population is a large number. the top brackets are responsible for the vast majority of the country. >> they talk about saving $700 billion over ten years, but it's not saving the $700 billion. it's really choosing to spend only, you know, $2.2 trillion opposed to $3 trillion over ten years. >> republicans argued that the

full sunset of the tax cuts would hurt small businesses. >> it's been challenging for a lot of small business owners, and even larger companies to determine how they are going to, you know, sort of map out their spending for 2011 if we don't have this certainty right now about the tax rate. >> you know, this higher income tax is going to affect small business decisions particularly when it comes to hiring. >> i don't think small business would be very hurt if the top brackets expired, but as i said, i don't think they are going to. >> in "new york times," peter orzag had the idea for the possible compromise, extend tax cuts for two years and then have a full sunset. the idea is reflected in the house bill number 4853. on december 2, 2010, the house

of representatives passed house resolution number 4853, the middle class tax relief act of 2010. this partly including president obama's idea extending them only for families earning under $250,000 a year. however, they extended the bush tax cuts permanently. the white house and senate republicans got into talks to try to create a compromise between the house and the senate. on december 6, 2010, president obama announced that a deal had been made with congressional republicans to extend the bush era tax cuts at all income level for two years as part of the house tax bill pack package. on december 9, 2010, harry reid posed house amount 4753. this amendment to the tax act included the extension of the bush tax cuts for all income

levels for two years. on december 15, the senate passed the tax bill with an 81-19 vote. on the same day, the house received the amended tax bill to vote on. after two days of debate on december 17, the house voted on the senate changes to the tax bill. it passed with a high majority of 277 to 148. on december 28, president obama signed the tax bill into law effectively extending the bush era tax cuts of citizens of all income levels for two years. [applause] however, the economy and citizens be affected by the new bill? >> i think we'll see a boost. >> what could be an alternative to tax cuts in the future? >> at the same time, one has to realize that this is a generally smaller than income.

people save. >> if we can combine climate change policy with tax policy, maybe we could put in place a carbon tax. this is a favored idea of economists, but not a great idea in terms of politicians. politicians don't like it because it sounds like a tax to raise energy cost to consumers, and, in fact, that's probably true. >> what should be the long term goal? >> let's just say -- let's just let the ships get out of the economic storm. let's not change the sail. we don't need anymore policy changes at this point until we can get on firmer ground as far as the economy is concerned. >> compromise by definition means taking some things you don't like, and the overall package was the right one to ensure that this economy has the best possible chance to grow and

create jobs. something's that's always been the greatest strength of america is a thriving middle class where everybody has a shot at the american dream. that should be our goal. >> go to studentcam.org to watch all the winning videos and continue the conversation about today's video on our facebook and twitter pages. >> o former amist who returned from egypt said the country needs more economic support to avoid an rise of conflict there. western military intervention in libya may drive a wedge between jihaddists and -- jihadists and al-qaeda. this is an hour and 45 minutes.

>> good morning, ladies and gentlemen, it's great to see so many people here today of an examination of really compelling events going on in north or ri cay and the middle east. today we're going to con accept trait on north -- concentrate and north africa and we have speakers with wide knowledge of this area and the events going on there at the moment. we have first, graeme bannerman who is going to be speaking on the future of egypt. graeme is a scholar at the middle east institute. he's formally worked with the department of state and the senate foreign relations committee. he has a doctorate in modern mirren history from the university of wisconsin and has taught at several well-known institutions. we're looking forward to hear

what he has to say about egypt. after that we'll have camille tawil. many of you might be familiar with camille from his articles he wrote for jamestown. if you read arabic, you know him from his work from the newspaper and is an expert on libya. he's worked on this for many years, so he was fully prepared to analyze the events going on now. we're looking forward to that. after that, we have derek henry flood who is also with jamestown foundation as the editor of the militant leadership monitor. if you vice president had a look at this -- if you haven't had a look at this publication, i suggest you do so. derek's been doing a great job

over the past year and very privileged to have him here today as he just returned from a six week stay in north africa, most of it spent in libya right on the front lines. derek's going to have a very interesting perspective on what went on there from a firsthand knowledge of events there. lastly and probablily leastly, i'll be speaking myself. [laughter] on security implications for north africa in the wake of the arab revolution, and my bio is in the material handed out if you care to have a look at it. without further adieu, maybe we can get started with graeme bannerman speaking on egypt. >> [inaudible] >> you can take the podium if you like. whatever you feel comfortable with. >> okay. let me say that i don't have any sure view of where the egyptian

revolution is going. we're in the middle of something, and it's evolving every day, and any of us who look at this have to be willing to readjust what we say on a daily and monthly basis. for me, this is the most important event in the middle east. they have the role in the middle east of being the fulcrum of events. it has in the last 60 years tips the balance of power in one direction or another. the 1952 revolution in egypt tipped the balance of power for the next almost two decades in favor of the soviet union in that direction because it's the direction egyptian revolution chose to go, and then president decided to the interest of egypt were working with the west and tipped it back in the favor of the west, and we have been fortunate that we dominated that reaming for the last period of time. we're now at another period of

time where egypt can tip one direction or another, and we don't know what's going to happen. it's an egyptian revolution, and those of us on the outside have minimum revolution. those of us who watched this for a long period of time, this is an exkiting -- exciting moment. i first went to cairo in 1963 and watched the russians build the high dam. it is a very different country today than in 1963 and changing rapidly. because this is an extraordinary situation, we are cursed to have ordinary analysis. we have to relook at everything we thought about egypt and rethink it on a daily basis. things are changing rapidly. first of all, the source of the information is limited. we are fortunate because there's lots of people there, and clearly, i'm one that believes having al jay --

al-jazeera broadcasts events, but that doesn't mean we don't need our own analysts and realize our reporting does have a bias and a slant to it, so we have to figure out what the biases are and slants are and do our own analysis. now, the problem i have is when universally describe here in washington the revolution in egypt is democratic, and i'm not sure what that means in egypt, and i'm not sure what democratic means for all of us. we are all enthralled with the way the young people in the square have managed to remove an leader and taken their croi country a place we never thought was possible. six months ago let alone today and is continuing to change. the problem is the problem for me is i worked on the senate

floor relations committee for a long time, and senator biden at that time always made a very important observation. the most important characteristic a politician can have is the ability to count. my problem is too many of us who view this as a democratic revolution have been blinded by the inspiration and forgot our ability to count, and that's what worries me. i am concerned of where we go, and what i mean by that is for the referendum on march 19, the christians, all of the youthful opposition democratic groups on the square, every business person i spoke to, spent weeks with these guys voted no. they all voted no, and together they couldn't get 23% of the population. if i'm a democrat in a small

sense, i'm asking who are the other 77% of the population? first of all, the biggest group everybody talks about is the muslim brothers, but nobody i've seen believes that the muslim brotherhood can generate more than 25% of the vote, so now all the sudden there's the 23% to fall in the reformist movement, plus the 25% that falls into the muslim brothers, and i'm saying who's the 52%? where do those people go? none of us know. we have to speck cue late what their thinking is, and that's what makes it difficult as an analyst in washington. you get some idea where the people come from if you go back and look at the 2005 elections. mubarak tried to reform the ndp

into being a more democratic, more youthful, more western oriented, more worldly party, and what he did in the party convention, he engineered the replacement of the ndp candidates from rural areas with young urban aggressive people with some parts of the community, but mainly his people, people who were worldly, western order yenlted, went to school in english, knew the world, and they replaced the traditional leaders in those areas with those candidates. the traditional leaders did not accept that. they all ran as independents against the ndp candidates, and they beat the ndp candidates across the board as independents. they replaced the ndp, so all of the sudden these people from the rural areas said, no, no, no, we're going to have a traditional leaders, the people we have ties with, the people we

care about. they know us, and we're going to vote for them. i would expect -- by the way, when they got into parliament, they all rejoined the ndp and got 80% of the members being ndp because all the up dependents who were not muslim brothers joined the parliament as ndp because they didn't want to be out of the party and wanted to be a part of the power structure. that said, that base of support particularly in the rural areas of egypt still interests so therefore that is a very strong stable factor within egyptian society, and they are not muslim brothers. the muslim brothers for the democratic movements are almost all centered, not exclusively, but heavily centered in urban areas and some other towns. why? because those areas where people have lost their traditional

village, family, and identities. the traditional leaders don't have the power where they come from. that's the problem we face. we don't know where these people are going to go. to the people on the outside looking for ways to help the democratic people become more popularment i mean, here's 23% of the population. understand within the 23% of the population, you have much -- many of the people who supported the old regime. you have to -- these ministers who are being prosecuted today and the other economic ministers, they would all father and mother -- fall within that 23% of the population who were reformists and cared. in the sense of egyptian society, they were reform is, and what we see is not a removal -- it's a removal of the regime, but all within those people called reformists because the government reformists became

corrupt by taking too much money for themselves. they were not part of the reformist movement, so when people talk about wanting to change the democratic structure, they are trying to figure a way to get that 23% to be a majority. that's what we want. if you listen to reforms, we want to break down the system, the things discussed, potentially break down the system and create lists. if you create lists, you then break the system of where the local leaders are influ enissue, but who replaces them? will it be democratic reformers? muslim brothers? people who make the muslim brothers look like liberals? it is a problem we face. then you see within egyptian society the other pillar that's under attack, the army. the army in egypt is different than anything we know. it makes you uncomfortable as an american to see how they function, but they have

functioned in egypt their own way. they are an institution, and they historically have been separate if society. they are not an institution that wants to interfere in the internal affairs of egypt. they want to be on the side, and they believe their responsibility is to provide stability. that's why when they came into square those who knew the army knew they would never fire on the egyptian people because it's their job to protect the egyptian people, not to harm them. when you have the pro-mubarak people counter attack on the square and everybody said the army should fire on those people, no, they weren't because they were also egyptian people. their job is bring stability. they did not want the job. they do not want to be in power. they want to see a civilian government come back. now, ten years ago, i think the structure of the army would have preferred a military officer to take over, but there's been an

evolution in thinking that they are satisfied with being there as the force to come in as stability, but they do not want to control the country itself. they know they need the civilian people, and the real problem egypt faces today is the revolution for most egyptians was not a democratic revolution. that's not why they're here. it was an economic revolution, and that revolution continues. the social, economic problems of egypt are tremendous. they -- you talk -- you see the news reports about factories, strikes, things aren't working, the economy is going downhill. the fear is that those people who have not participated in economic growth over the last decade, they did not really participate that much in the revolution. this is the 77%, but they expect their lives to get better. if this government cannot deliver on improving the lives of the mass of the people, this revolution is likely to take a

second revolution. we may have replacements and having something happen we don't know. we don't know where this is going to go. the crucial thing for the government of egypt is to get goods and services to as many people as possible so it looks like the government is doing something on their behalf. worrying about the democratic revolution is fine, but you need to address the underlying economic problems, and at this point, neither the state of egypt is doing it because it had their hands full getting through the daily process, nor is the outside hope. the world is going to be very sorry if they do not help the government of egypt address the economic issues in the future, and we just have no idea where this is going. >> thanks, graeme, an enlightening perspective b on

the revolution. let's move on now to camille tawil who is going to speak to us about libya. >> let me start by saying thank you to the jamestown foundation for inviting me. it's a pleasure to be here. i'd like to thank glen for inviting me and also would like to thank the rest of the panel here and thank you all for coming. before i start, i'd lirk to say something that hasn't been easy preparing this paper. it all depended on whether gadhafi falls or manages to cling to power. in the beginning, only few people believed that gadhafi can stay for long. all the odds were again him. in tunisia and egypt, the countries that border libya, the regimes fell quickly, less than

a month, 28 days, and in egypt, the regime of president mubarak also fell in a few weeks. all the odds were against gadhafi staying in power. he was not only facing an internal rebellion, but facing the whole world including the mighty armies of the u.s., britain, and france among others. you know, the third month now of the libyan crisis, and gadhafi has managed to stay in power. he may fall indeed and very quickly as the american government and many people hope he will do, but, however, looking at the past, gadhafi has managed to weather the storm and lasted for almost 42 years in power. can he now manage what he did in the 1980s and 1990s? we will see. in this paper, i will try to point at the -- at some points

of strengths and weaknesses in his regime and talk about the opposition parties or the rebellion, and i'll also mention something, the implications going on in nigeria, especially -- sorry, what's going on in libya on algeria, an important country that should not be ignored in any effort to resolve the libyan crisis. before i start, let me say something briefly. libya now presents a golden opportunity for reconciliation between america and the jihadists who the american government until recently considered them part of al-qaeda.

the end result could lead to a weakened al-qaeda, but there's the possibility that your policy could backfire and will end up with a stronger al-qaeda in the whole of north africa, and we talk about this a little bit later. let me start by talking about gadhafi's regime. it is weak from the outside. colonel gadhafi makes the important decisions in libya, not a single order can be issued without his approval, and he claims to be neither a president nor a prime minister. he is the leader of the revolution plus the king of african kings, of course. [laughter] in theory, toppling a one-man regime should not be a difficult thing to do, especially in light of having so many enemies within the country and from outside,

but in practice, it is a very difficult matter as gadhafi proved for the last 42 years of his rule. the 1969 military call was for sure not a one-man show. the three officers behind the core of the toppling of the regime came from all over the country and from all strides. they were mainly influenced by the arab popular movement at that time. gradually, colonel gadhafi started to change, and he wanted power all to himself. this led to some of his supporters breaking away and even going as far as trying to topple him. in the 1980s and 1990s, gads gadhafi's regime defeated three major plots, one from the nslf.

in 1984, the national front fighters attacked the residence of gadhafi in tripoli. at the end of the 1980, the national front moved its fighters to algeria from which was hoping it would start going inside, but failed in doing so, and the last major plot against gadhafi happened in 1993 when some officers from a very powerful tribe tried to go against him, and we'll talk about this a little bit later. in the second half of the 1990s, also gadhafi defeated an insurgency led by the jihadists, the