.. gram is now underway.

>> it's too premature to speak about his legacy. after all yesterday we began an audit of these 8 million votes according to the deal that secretary kerry brokered last week. it will be a complicated audit and i wouldn't be surprised having gone through something similar myself with the ambassador and it may be longer than expected. and i imagine that to a certain degree question that we are going to talk about today cannot president karzai's legacy will also be affected by how this election comes to an end. nonetheless i think we all still have a great deal to say. president karzai has been leaving afghanistan one way or another the last 13 years since december, 2001. and we thought it was an

appropriate moment while the election is being worked out to take stock of what has been accomplished in that time. and by that i need not only the state of the country they leave for the next president, but also certain habits of governing that he has adopted it has become the model to a certain extent. was this the only way of governing. in the u.s. they would have a particular effect after afghanistan's development and progress in the five to ten years if not longer. the other tricky thing about the topic is that it is karzai's legacy not only himself but i have a feeling it will be difficult in the discussion to separate the man from the lega

legacy. in my own thinking it seems to me from the point of view of the u.s. foreign policy and not of the international community in general, it's been difficult to have an afghanistan policy and we have often had a policy towards president karzai which means the tools and the terms in which we discussed this policy have been more sort of psychological almost than diplomatic. what is president karzai thinking and how can we convince them to do this or that. has president karzai lost his mind? and it is a testament i think in part to the fact that obviously constitutionally the president has immense powers which means that he is obviously the most the president has emen members por pows -- the president has powers and this shows his leadership and personality. with that, our panelist i assume are here neither to praise our

bury him but give us an accurate assessment of what the count rery is leaving behind, what he has achieved, what he might have achieved and how enduring is this legacy and how much has the afghanistan he has created over the 13 years become a permanent part of afghanistan's dna or if aspects can be changed by the next administration whoever emerges for this. we have a great panel for this topic.

"the man who ran afghanistan" is definitely worth a read. general alan who is a commander of nato forces in 2011-2013, a crucial time to the afghan lead in afghanistan and has obviously dealt closely are president karzai across the spectrum related to that military relationship and the political relationship. finally, ambassador kai eide who was the special representative of the secretary general in the u.n.between 2008-2010. and i will try to be an impartial moderator, i should

say i worked with him at some point. kai eide, general alan and i will have you talk. kai, i hand the floor over to you. >> thank you for the people for organizing this. there have been many events over the years i spent in washington and i also enjoy them very, very much. i have to go back to two statements when i talked to him in may of this year. one was looking back at 2002 when they just finished all of

the chairman of the interim authority, it was a euphoric atmosphere and i believe that will help clean the house and then hand it over to the owner in good shape. that was his thinking at the time. and then he said about his thinking 13 years later, i see afghanistan as a two-story house with a tenant upstairs doesn't interfere with the owner and how he organizes the house. the tenant is welcome to stay, the tenant is welcome to stay -- the tenant being the united states -- but the owner has to organize the house and sometimes it is the international community has treated some of them as insects. that is a dramatic statement.

and then you wonder what has happened in between. this euphoric statement of 2012 and this bitterness that comes through in 2014. today karzai is seen as critical of the united states and i believe that is unfair in fact. i don't think he is. he is critical of certain actions that have been undertaken or policies that have been pursued but not of the u.s. and then also a misunderstanding

of karzai as an afghan leader. when you meet him he is not like the other leaders but nor is he like the leaders who have spent decades abroad who received their education abroad. he is there somewhere in between. it is easy to thing here is a western oriented leader in afghanistan clothes but that is far from the truth because karzai is afghan to the court. he is an afghan political leader and lib lives in two worlds at the same time. the old afghan political con tect with his country and traditions and in the new world of institution established after the taliban. and where does he feel most at

ease? i think he by far feels most at ease in the old traditional afghan world because that is his world and the world in which he grew up and he tend to not understand that unfortunately. when discussing his legacy in may, i asked him how do you see your legacy? he didn't respond. we pushed the question right back to me and i said how to you see my legacy? and can i answer, mr. president? first of all, i see you as a concensus building and he said yes. i wanted to be that. and i said well, mr. president, that is not the easiest way to get a democracy and he said how

do you define democracy and i said it is ruled by majority and he said that is impossible in this country. it must mean ruled by concenses. this country will go through fragmentation without it. i think he's right. there is no other afghanistan leader who i have met who understood his society and complexity more than he does. when i was there in 2010 and later, passed on leaders will spend much of their time abroad and said to me i had to know he understood the situation much better than we did. he understood their reaction in the south and east much better

than we did. i remember so well there was one prominent minister who travelled with the president to the south and then sent me an sms which read now i am in the real afghanistan. what did it mean to me? he was a person who spent much of his life abroad and discovered afghanistan. i think it has been experienced and described in articles how he met with the elders for prayer and lunch and discusses so many things. it is a very relaxed discussion. and you wonder sometimes and i didn't understand -- i remember myself leaving the meeting and thinking what is this about? and it was about showing respect. and enabling these leader to go back to their communities and

say the presidential shows respect. in that sense, i think he is a master politician and the politician that knows the country better. so tremendously important for keeping the country together. and then karzai, the reformer, and i must say from 2002-2014 the country has been through a tremendous transformation. sometimes we overdo it and become propegandistic but there has been tremendous progress. you cannot say the man who has presided over this isn't an important part of that process. he is. and i think since we have mojib

here. today the media society is more vibrant, more open, more questions are being discussed over and over again then than any other country in the wider region. any other country. not only with male journalist but female journalist. i remember one press conference with the president in his palace and he mentioned this very provocative question. he is the reformer. did he manage to become karzai the peacemaker as he wanted? unfortunately not. inspite of efforts and wishing

so. . but i must say all of the rumors why heard, we wanted to change the constitution and put in a weak president for four years so he could return, he want today create this chaotic situation so he could hang on to presidency. nothing like that has happened. i believe karzai intends to leave and let's hope he can finish in peace and without any confrontation. just one more minute. >> take your time. >> there is a tendency to see him as anti-u.s. or very kit critical of the u.s. i will tell you a story. in 2009 just before the

inauguration for the president's second term a i gave a speech and criticized the war load and the corruption and i said i believe a future peaceful structure of the region goes back to some neutral state. karzai became very angry and reacted publically. most of the media believe that was of what i said about war loads and corruption. not at all. he heard that before. he new. i had six meetings with him trying to appoint him as candidate to the vice presidency. he knew of that. i had without consulting him touched upon the most fundamental aspect of the

country's state and future. the country's future is staa neutral state without asking him and he called me up and said i don't want this to be a neutral country. i want this country to be a closed, non-nato u.s. ally. he repeated that in his inauguration speech a few weeks later. in spite of being humilliation he went through and in spite of feeling he was not concerted he said that relationship is critical to me. his second term became -- his

last term as president became one long effort at restoring of gun sovereign and i believe he was right because sovereignty and respect for a country's sovereignty is a pre-condition for his return to normalcy. it will be up to his successors to chose if they will follow that course or if they will find another. but i do believe that he has laid the framework for moving forward on solid ground. so in that respect, i do see president karzai has a historic leader who managed to keep the country together, who managed to preside over a period of historic reform, and who then

rightly insisted on respect for his country as a proud all be it war-torn country. thank you. >> thank you, kai. general alan? >> scott, thank you very much for the invitation to be here this morning. it is always great to be here. these are important sections and i would say important to any gathering like this would be probably at the beginning to take a moment to talk about why this dpath gathering is important. this isn't just about karzai per se in many respects. it is the role of an institution like this and for us like this to talk about how we can learn from this kind of gathering. the challenges that leaders like

president karzai not only facing in his own country today but his successor will face and in other countries similar to the situation that we find in afghanistan. i think it is also important, another outcome of a session leak like this to hold up the m m mirror and look as a country and people and decide if we can stand the reflection we see. and a gathering like this should help us in form the policies of the united states not just with afghanistan and other states in co comptempory situations like theys. scott, thank you very much for convening this group. let me start with saying the bottom line up front, which i

think you would expect from a marine, i believe the historic history of karzai will be more favorable. all of us were selected to comment or offer perspectives on what i believe is an important man. we will probably agree on some issues and disagree on other issues but i don't think that means any of all of us are wrong, but it is because when one regards hamid karzai and his times and the complexity of his environment and the challenges he had to face it defies a distillation on the man or the circumstanc circumstances. my role i took it as provider

the role of commander of president karzai. i remember well about worrying about my first meeting with him. we spent a lot of time preparing for that meeting. it would define our relationship and follow on what would considered to be a strained relationship with general putrays. it was mid-july in 2011 and i was the forth isaf commander in three years that president karzai was going to have to deal with. and in and of itself that was a source of self-inflicted friction on the allied and western side. the meeting was friendly and an opportunity to establish what i believe to this day a friendship. i pledged him my support and my full energy in our partnership for the future. but not surprisingly afterward,

i was imused and a bit alarmed at the palace press release of our first meeting and the many things i had conceded to him and in a meeting that would have taken a couple days. but we were able to get work done, it established a standard, i think, for a good relationship in the future. when i called my dear friend, the u.s. ambassador ryan crocker who point out what i thought was a process foul on this first meeting and the press release he just laughed and welcomed me to afghanistan. this began a relationship that would expand by 18 months of command where i saw him once a week and often frequently. i sought to make the relationship more man casual.

i wanted it to be productive and considered the relationship a friendship. he is a charming individual and is extraordinary well-read. he once loaned me a book and said will you take a look at this and give me your thoughts. a month later he asked nowhere the book was and i brought him the copy and a copy for him to inscribe. he knew us far better than we understood him. and the culture of the other tribes and ethnicity of afghanistan. we were at a disadvantage or put differently he was at a distinct advantage in his leadership.

and i told people you could make a fundamental error in your relationship with president karzai by assuming he is a western press in the context of the european leader. he is a tribal leader. and as kai properly said many of the hardwired paradimes were the first lens he would view the crisis we have the solve. and that came from the inherent responsibility we had to understand the environment in which we were operating as military f military f military professionals.

he was always happiest which he was revealing the afghanistan history. sometimes he would be rambling from one topic to another and i would sit there wondering where all of this is going but invariable he would bring it back to the president and tie it together skillfully to address whatever issue we face and use the clear vehicle of afghanistan history to make the point we needed to solve the problems we were facing today. let me take you through a few of the challenges we faced together. it helps to define how he and i dealt on a day-to-day basis on our interaction. we can come back to these in the question and answer sessions on any one in particular because

each one was a substantial left. the first was the agreement between the strategic partnership. we dealt closely on this issue and as a direct result of the spa we ultimately had to go into the negotiating of the bi-lateral security agreement as well. in combination with the partnership agreement we convened a -- and this goes to a an important point about the nature of hamid karzai as a leader and politician, it is that he was masterful in managing and manipulat networks. she understand the people of

afghanistan. he may not have been of their background but understood them and worked well informally in networks as a tribal lead tour seek this consistance that i believe kei talked about being his attention. he was frustrated with the united states over the war in pakistan and convinced we were fighting the car in the wrong place. this floated through themes that we dealt with and that was civilian deaths, the cross border fires in 2012-2013 part of which was a myth and part was a reality. and we dealt on the issues of detentions. this goes again to the issue of president karzai seeking to establish and reinforce the

sense that afghanistan was a sovereign country and to rest from the united states and other countries the kinds of respect due to that country and its people. as we negotiated a mou for my turning over the several thousand afghan detainees that process and sense of sovereignty came home in a real way and then unfortunately when president karzai cut parts of the mou i had to seize the turnover of detainees until i was sure they would not be released ultimately to target us or afghanistan citizens again. we had a period of time where we worked on night operations and special operations and that resulted in a memrandom of undering when we sought to be unilateral engaged to one where

we partners and i committed to the development of special operations capabilities where afghanistan could operate unilaterally without specific u.s. or nato help. it was a time of transition. we were moving the afghanistan forces from being in trail to being in the lead. forces were being moved from being in the lead to advisories. but i worked hard and those before us and succeeding us worked hard to understand hamid karzai's sense of ownership has the afghanistan national security forces as the commander of chief but the ownership of the afghanistan forces in the context of the conflict being waninged. it was never clear what his attitude was. he dealt carefully and awfully

on the issue of corruption. trying to get him to work towards dealing with institutional corruption and him trying to get our spending and contract processes under control. and there were a number of other areas like the afghan local police and the elimination of private security asmes and transiti transitioning where we worked together. we faced world class crisis as well and they were important to define how we worked during times of stress and crisis and that was an area that defined our friendship and we leveraged that several times to keep the crisis from sending off in the space. the first was the downing of my ch-47 within an entire seal strike on board. that was a moment of great concern because he believed we were beginning to witness that moment on the battlefield that

was witnessed when the first stingers arrived during the soviet war. we worked that closely together. shortly after that the u.s. embassy and my head quarters was attacked by suicide bomberbs and we worked closely to understand that. and followed by the assassination of the chair of the peace council and the associated eventwise -- events with that. and then the tragedy along the pakistan border and they closed the principle groundline of communication in which 85% of my supplies flowed. and that was followed by the urine video for u.s. soldiers

were found to be being on the dead taliban members and the sad burning of the koran which began the process of the insider attacks and that stressed the relationship between the west in general, nato, the afghanistan government and president karzai and stressed the relationship between the coalition itself was the attacks were eroding the conc etchings frea concensis and that was followed by the deaths of others. and each of these, rather it was a challenge or crisis, permitted me to take the measure of the man. and where found president karzai to be a worthy partner in most of these. we didn't agree necessarily on many of them and often the outcome wasn't what either of us

desired. but it was moments where we had the community to work very closely. so against the backdrop of these many factors, i think it is important to take stock of president karzai's legacy under these many strains. he has very strong opinions on the sources of corruption in afghanistan. he blames foreign influences significantly and the united states in particular but was unable or unwilling to take credibility and decisive action to curb the corruption within the country. he remembers the u.s. role in the shaping of the 2009 election that caused a lot of animosity toward the united states. he was critical of the united states policy toward pakistan. but didn't exurt every effort to

reach out to pakistan to improve that relationship. and he would acocuse the u.s. o arrogance and demonstrated his brinkmanship. but at the same time he confronted this, we had to keep in mind as americans, and i heard this and tested this that many crisis we had with president karzai. issues about private security council and that was an issue to you and to afghanistan. he brought us too brink and the

creati creation. and the elimination ultimately is a preventional reconstruction team in terms of rendering them as capacity building mechanisms rather than service provider mechanisms that compromise the government to develop and civilian contracting, casualties and corruption. if he had listened to him earlier and taken the action he believed he should have, this could have reduced friction in in many respects. legacies take many shape and i will take a crack at some of this and i want to be careful because it is difficult even before he is out of office to talk about his historic legacy and that is why a panel like

this is valuable in terms of you he look at the future but i think it is fraught with dangers in terms of the potential for criticizing a sitting president. i will leave to the afghans and i suspect i will hear a bit in a moment from a very prominent afghan journalist how they view their president. but from the many afghans i have dealt and i have never asked an afghan their opinion on the president because i didn't want to put him in that place. doesn't mean they didn't offer it. but i had a sense of their open but sometimes grudging respect for him. they respected hamid karzai. but there was a sense of melancholy on the absence of his presence and governance in his life and i am talking about

subnational governance when we worked hard to develop but defied my ability as a commander. they were very proud of him in many ways. proud he today up the the foreigners of which i was one. but in regard to the bilateral security agreement, many afghans were horrified that he sacrificed his future and never fully explaining why or clearly understanding why. i think in some respects, in terms of a contemporary legacy we see much grounds was lost in that regard. i don't think pakistan will view the karzai era are much

nostalgia. karzai's view of pakistan were seldom favorable and openly expressed. i don't think iran will miss the president either for many reasons but i think it goes to his point about president karzai's journey of making afghanistan a sovereign entity to be reckoned with. and even after the presence in kabul. and the bilateral agreement left a security force in the country and iran resisted that. nato will view him as a partner who was difficulty to deal with.

but only karzai can say -- it is unlikely that he viewed the enormity of the 50-nation led coalition as too intrusive on the sovereignty of afghanistan and his own authority. but i think we may have missed or he may have missed the point that those 50 nations committed blood and tied the international community to the future of this poor country in ways we have probably never seen the parallel before. afghanistan is a poor state, a nation emerging from conflict whose interest were the personal interest of the 50 nations in the world. and then there is the u.s. and he is being judged harshly in the u.s. perhaps unfairly so and will be likely so for some time. his inflamitory rhetoric aimed

at this administration and sadly aimed at the sacrifices of the u.s. troops was compounded by a sense of his ungratefulness in the u.s. help. perceptions and this attracted much of the ire of the congress and this put the relationship with afghanistan commitment in danger. i didn't consider the likelihood of this being an option and pulling out from afghanistan and taking nato and the international community. but over the last six-eight months and with the rhetoric over the bi-lateral security agreement we came close to a

zero agreement. although i hope the soon to to be inaugerated president will do so quickly. this tainted his short-term legacy overall and i believe it will taint it for a while with the united states. but the truth is hamid karzai is a man with capabilities but hum human frailties. he was placed in one of the most demanding positions in the on the planet and forced to emerge after a generation of conflict and found difficulty in managing a national government but in creating the sub-national government necessary to extend the rift of kabul to the people. he had to co-exist and operate with the largest war time mission for modern era and seeking to reconcile a rebellion

and to bring peace to his people. few men have ever faced larger challenges for so long and so few measures and tools to do well any of them individually much less all of them at the same time. he was flawed and played fast and loose with relationships overtime and yes he was prov provocaprovoca trict provocative and no he wasn't on medicine -- not that i know of. but the new president will lead the nation that is still facing issues but one profoundly changed for the better in the 12-13 years hamid karzai assumed his office in this trouble nation and that context while

hamid karzai finds himself strongly criticized; i believe a detailed analysis of his presidency and him as a man will return a balanced appraisal of his legacy and after all of these years of conflict afghanistan could have come so far under his leadership. thank you. >> thank you, general allen. there was a huge amount we will be able to engage with a little later on. now you put me in the position of doing something you have never done and that is to ask an afghan what he thinks of the president's legacy. the floor is yours. >> i am humbled to be part of such a panel. i wanted to read a few passages from the article i recently wrote for the atlantic.

it is called after karzai. i walked around trying to find a copy this morning for an hour and i couldn't so it tells you how well i know washington, d.c. >> it is in everybody's brief cases. >> >> i will read a couple passages and have remarks about the president's domestic policy and local governance and in providing the context for the passage i will go back to the point the general emphasised and how difficult it is to predict a challenging legacy. the afghanistan that karzai leaves behind is more cohesive than the mess he inherited. my own peers, educated urbanites connected to the world and provided with free space of

expression. he is seen as a man of great personal dignity and tried to lesson the bloodshed i was born into. because of the president's style of leadership these gains appear to be tenious. a free press blossomed under him but ever time they emerged they were blacked by the president's intervention. the same could be said with the woman of the society par participati participating. karzai has kept the war loads off balance and he deserves credit for doing so, but these men are not gone from public

life. they have continued to profit from contracts and investments tied to the presence of foreign millitaries. vested economic interest keeps them loyal to a democratic system. many have sanitized these images, these war loads, shorter beards, fancy suits and more politically correct language. their sons and daughter who seem more attuned to democratic practices are stepping into their father's soon. karzai's national security advisor said he doubt anyone would fair better than karzai in a fragmented society. yet the next president will had inhairherit a broken chain of command and difficult issues and

he is going to lack the possessions that karzai worked hard to cultivate. the questions of whether the forces of the past will succeed again or whether modernizing forces will take the country forward hasn't been finalized. almost none of the achievements made under karzai appear irreversible. instead, afghanistan remains a place stuck governor its own history and which way it moves next is anyone's guess. i saw the president about a week after the first round of elections to find a successor to him in april. it was the feeling at that time was that he had done a good job staying neutral in the elections. there was a sense of jubilation and 7 million people turned out

to vote and karzai proved his critics wrong. in april all of that seemed false and the article went to print and in that one month or one and a half month until the article came out we had another round of elections -- a run off because the first round didn't have a clear winner. and after the run off there were allegations of karzai med medaling in the election and trying to steal the election

from him and the triangle was the rival candidate, president karzai and the election commission. so a lot changed and i started questioning some of the things i wrote. but i am glad that most of the questions that i had discussed in the article deals with his 12 years of leadership and his style of local governance and i would like to make a few remarks about that. i think the legacy that matters is the legacies on the ground. yes, the relationship with nato, yes, the relationship with the united states will matter, and it will be questioned in history. but what he leaves behind on the ground, especially to my generation, a generation that sort of is a product of his 13 years will matter a lot. so if we go back to a sense of

euphoria that was mentioned in 2002, when hamid karzai came to power there was responsibility and mandates to built institutions. afghanistan was fractured over the three decades of war and even the palace he came to in kabul i remember during the taliban days people took shortcuts through the area. shepherds could bring their h herds to graze because the center of power wasn't there. that is an indication of how we had no institution and the biggest mandate for karzai was building institutions. unfortunately, looking back,

that was his weakness. he personalized politic as and e president got involved in local matters and he also directly involved himself sort of undermining what he had for institutions. one of the biggest weaknesss of the president was that. when i asked him why he didn't build institutions he had reasons and that goes to two handicaps he had. i think the first was in 2002, he took over a government that was handed to him. he didn't chose cabinet members,

governors, or local chiefs. so he didn't trust the government. and what he did was to develop informal networks as the general mentioned to use for his governance. the first handi-cap was that. he didn't trust the government and relied on external forces. the second handicap he developed was he started mistrusting the internationals and believed his government was in the pocket of the internationals and he could not trust his governors because they were closer to the internationalist. so these two factors play a role in why he didn't trust his

institutions and put more effort to build them stronger. i will give you one example of what i mean by relying and having a disregard for chain of commands. there was a man who was a former taliban commander, very interesting character, this beefy big man. if you look at his history, he fought everyone he worked it. he came to the taliban and started fighting. around 2008-2007 when he was in a difficult situation there was an agreement that the british troops made a mess out of the car. karzai started experimenting and reached out to this local taliban leader and tried to turn him and appoint him as a

governor. it was an interesting experience to see if he can neutralize the experience. karzai directly was in contact with this district chief. going around his cabinet level ministry for local governance and going around this proventional governor and directly talking to the district's chief. and he would not let the governor or cabinet know who he was coming to town. he would call up the office saying send me a car, i am hear to see the president. -- here -- so in a country where building institutions should be a priority he involved himself at such a local level and what happened in the process was undermining that sort of local governance chain of command. i will read you a couple quotes -- by interview with the

president got philosophical in his answers and one of the yes, cards that is traditional in his way of talking and in his beliefs, but one of this cabinet ministers told me when he starts speaking in english he seems as modern as anybody. his education is philosophy, policy and english. when we speaks in english you don't see the tribal side. it was a friday, a day off in afghanistan and he was in a good mood and got very philosophical. i asked him about relying on informal sources and networks instead of his own government institutions and he said my style of leadership wasn't in the sense of state government. i relied the very least on

government institutions. i relied the least on government institutions. i was more relying upon the afghanistan people. all of my decisions and statements were based on the information i received from the people in the country not its own government institutions. and i said doesn't that undermine your mandate to build institutions. and he said no, the government has to be build up. the government doesn't have to be fakely admired and kept weak. he said it was a realization of the facts of a true situation on the ground. the facts on the ground was the afghanistan government was weak, no capacity, no means of movement and couldn't provide the president of the country with the information related to the facts on the ground and that is why he relied on the informal sources and networks to run the

country. i think there was a misinformed analysis in his decision to rely on the informal networks and tribal networks particularly. president karzai wrote an essay in 1980's analyzing how the king used tribes as a sort of bowl work of stability for his regime. he kept them at a good distance and had a good relationship and that gave the kings 40 years of stability. the problem was that president karzai ruled on that mentality about 40 years later. and during the 3-4 decades of conflict those tribal structures and social networks were disrupted and the conflict created a new generation of local leaders who had guns, drug

money, who didn't have local legitimacy. so hamid karzai comes in in 2002 and relies on what he thinks are tribal leaders but they are difficult to tell the difference from war loads because they have guns, drug money and no legitimacy. and i want to comment on karzai's legacy. one was the issue that the general referred to as his views as commander in chief. the preception on the ground is hamid karzai never became a commander in chief. ... question. i asked him that, mr. president, when your soldiers die in the line of duty, you don't stand with them. that is the perception among the people. a few months ago there was an incident in kunar province where

20-something afghan army soldiers were killed. their bodies were brought to kabul at the military hospital. hamid karzai had a trip planned to vir sri lanka that day. he canceled the trip using the death of the soldiers as a pretext, but he remained in his palace politicking, you know, building election coalition rather than attempting the funeral of those soldiers. and i asked him this, said, mr. president, the people believe you never became a commander in chief. and he said, yes, i never became a commander in chief for two reasons. one, that i am an absolute pacifist in my heart. so the contradiction here is that you have a president in time of war, 12 years of war who is this self-proclaimed absolute pacifist. and the second reason he said is that i didn't believe in this war. this was not a war, this was conspiracy. so it was, it was fascinating to

me. and i asked him whether you see it as a serious or as a war, your soldiers die every day. and as a commander in chief, you're expected to at least show appreciation. he said, i do. he pounded, you know, the table. he said i do, that's western propaganda. which is funny to me, because i was a local sitting there asking that question. it wasn't a western journalist. so his views on the war were fascinating to me. the final issue that i would like to, you know, close with is that the perception of hamid be karzai is that he is a tremendous political tactician in terms of building consensus, in terms of if you go back to 2002 the way he came to power, he did not have a militia, he did not have a massive political network, yet 12 years later he's, you know, the most powerful hand in the country. that show -- powerful man in the

country. that shows he has political genius this terms of tactics. but the criticism is hamid karzai was never a visionary leader. and i asked him that question. i said, mr. president, the perception is that you did not have a vision for this country, that you were a great tactician trying to keep the fragile stability together, but you didn't have a picture of where you wanted to see the country, say, ten years from now. and the luxury that president karzai had so rare, no to other leader would have the amount of resources, the amount of international support he had, yet he lacked a vision for the country. when i spoke to those closest to him who worked with him over the past 12 years, they say he never defined a clear vision that this is where i want to see afghanistan ten years from now, twenty years from now. he had principles. he had principles that he did not compromise on. one of the principles that ambassador eide mentioned was the freedom of press, freedom of

expression. he's been good on the issue of women's rights within the context that he has to please these tribal, you know, parts of the country, but at the same time he has to work towards slow progress of sort of institutionalizing safeguards for women. so he has principles, but he didn't have a clear vision in terms of a model in mind that i want to see afghanistan like singapore 10 years from now, 20 years from now, like iran, pakistan or whatever. just not a clear picture. and those closest to him say that if you have a vision and not unly size it -- publicize it, it's not even paint a picture of it to those closest to you who try to help move the country forward. and i think the question that i asked for the piece in the atlantic was to ask whether it is possible to be a visionary in the circumstances that hamid karzai ruled in. i think the general mentioned

that we should see this as sort of a learning experience of looking at a leader has challenges, and i think, to me, that's one of the more fascinating questions. if somebody like hamid karzai is not sure of his physical or political survival every day, especially if you go back to pooh, can he a-- 2002, can he afford to be a visionary? and i went to kandahar to sort of trace the story a little bit in september 2002, on september 5, 2002, just a few months after he had taken power. he was attending his brother's wedding in kandahar, and he got pretty close to being killed right there. just a few months into his presidency. he was waving at the crowd, and a young man in police uniform started opening fire at him from a very close range. he ducked, the governor of kandahar got a bullet the this his ear -- in his ear who was sitting next to him. and there was this young man, a

very big fan of karzai who had heard his name, he jumped on the assassin and wrestled him down and sort of basically saved hamid karzai. so i went to kandahar to trace the young man's story and to ask his family was that sacrifice worth it? when you look back at it 12 years later? this young manmade hamid karzai's 12 years of government possible. was the sacrifice worth it? and the young man's brother had a very emotional answer is and a very candid answer. he said sometimes when i think about it, we have a good house, we have a good family, all we want is our brother back. you know? the natural answer. but then his -- he said i have a 9-year-old daughter, and he had his second child was asking for a second ice cream right there. they have a bakery, so i was interviewing him at his bakery. he said, but sometimes when i think about it, my girl is in

fourth grade, and sometimes when i think about it, if my brother hadn't made that sacrifice in 2002, maybe this wouldn't have been possible. there would have been more chaos, there would have been more bloodshed, and maybe my daughter wouldn't be in fourth grade right now. so it's that mixed legacy. but i think i leave, we ought to ask that question that in the circumstances that hamid karzai ruled in -- a very fragmented society, unsure of his physical and political survival every day -- can a leader afford to be a visionary. >> thank you. i want to make maybe one comment and ask one question before we open it up. it's fascinating especially to listen to kai and mujib who have both been in kabul recently and asked president karzai these questions directly, we've been asking about his legacy, why

weren't you commander in chief, why did you act this way and not another? but i think both of you minimized an issue that i think is especially interesting to this audience and important to the future of afghanistan which is, you know, the relationship with the u.s. and with the rest of the world because afghanistan is still a country that depends a great deal on the resources of the international community, on the willingness to support the ansf in continuing to try to provide security and paying the salaries of the government and so fort. so forth. alan raised this question, but, you know, the question i suppose i have first, kai, mujib and then maybe a reaction from john is, you know, it seems in the last year or several months president karzai's sort of gone out of his way to be antagonistic and almost petty in his relations marley with the u.s. -- particularly with the u.s. not just the bsa which maybe one

could understand is a tactical gambit, but the recognition of the annexation of crimea, these kinds of things seem to be deliberately antagonizing an ally that the next president will need to rely on. and i don't know if either of you have insights on what is his thinking behind that? is there something behind more than a visceral reaction? and then maybe after you two speak, general allen, you'll have something more to say on that. start with you, kai. >> you mentioned the crimea, i discussed that with him. i don't think i will go into that here. but i think there is now a level of bitterness in him that has increased tremendously over the last couple of years, of course. it stems, i think, there the

very early days. and general allen mentioned it, mujib did also, he came in not with his own government, not the government of his choosing. but what was he facing? he was facing a situation where there was a reluctance on the part of the u.s. to try to regulate or reduce the our of the warlords at the time. although there may have been an opportunity, there was a clear reluctance. there was a strong hesitation with regard to starting building afghan institutions. there was very little investment in 2002 and 2003. we lost tremendous time in -- [inaudible] it was from the u.n. as well as the u.s. because the u.s.' attention was already on iraq. the only ones that had a heavy footprint were the warlords who could remain where they were. the man was left in a situation where he had no instruments to

project power. that is, that was a start. and i think that problem has been with us all the time. then when the money started to come in and the forces started to come in, what happened? it's almost inevitable that you have civilian casualties, and it's even more inevitable in the context that you do not know where the information or intention that you get from -- intelligence that you get there one person can be part of a family dispute with another. but it's quite clear that when some say he's thousand playing to -- he's now playing to his own audience as if it's a tactic, it's clear that what we saw this civilian casualtieses, destruction of rot, etc., harmed him in the eyes of his public very, very strongly. not only the u.s., it's not only the u.s. became less popular,

but there were protests in kabul against the president. and i remember it was the governor who said if this doesn't stop, then we will start a jihad against the americans. and it was followed by the demonstrations in kabul. and then when the money came in, when the money came in, what did the president see? he saw that the u.s. contracting system and subcontracting and subcontracting, etc., etc., left little in afghanistan. much money was spent on afghanistan, very little was left in afghanistan. and how some of these people became super rich. and our criticism for him of corruption to be hypocritic. it's not quite right. i'm not sharing that view. they saw it as being-in critic. hypocritic. i remember in the hague when we wanted to address corruption, we

said, yes, we will carry out a joint audit, the international community and the afghans, of the hundred that's being spent. and -- [inaudible] said, no, no, this doesn't relate to us, it relates to you. well, it relates very much to us. the special investigator general for afghanistan reconstruction has proven that beyond any doubt. so i must say i think he has reasons for bitterness. i think he is grateful to see everything that has been invested, but as one very prominent colleague, member of his government said, we should be grateful, but it was spent in an inefficient way. then comes to the coordination. and we have people in the world that knows this much better than i do. when we look -- when i was at the u.n., head of the u.n., we found out that between one-half and one-third of all the money

spent in afghanistan, nobody knew where it was going. for what you were, to what area, etc., etc. we didn't have a clue. how can you then coordinate? we kept building institutions that you mentioned, general. once heard of, it was done without the knowledge of the afghan government. how can you then build institutions? there had to be a partnership between the two that simply was not there. ask finally -- and finally, i must say the bitterness that is there today, i think we have in the beginning the after begans did not have -- afghans did not have think institutions, and they were spoon feeding from the international community. and as one member of government said, you know, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. much was accepted at the time. and then came a different situation.

the afghans felt that thousand thousand -- now we're strong enough to say what we think about this, and the birtherness increased -- bitterness increased, and you saw the reaction that you have from karzai. and even one of those who has spent the longest time in, abroad, and you came back as member of the government said, look, we really had to tolerate a lot at that time that we should not have tolerated. and again, as he says, i cannot call them because he'll be -- [inaudible] in a few weeks from now. he said the americans found it very difficult to distinguish between afghanistan as a sovereign country and afghanistan as enemier the to have. enemy territory. and i think there's something true this that. we did not manage, the international community, to adapt from a situation where afghanistan was without

institutions, relying completely on the international community, to a situation where it had institutions and where we had to demonstrate that they should thousand really be this control. -- they should now really be in control. but we are very reluctant to, in fact, implement it, i'm afraid. so i think much of the bitterness today when he also looks back at the 13 years as we do, hutch of his bitterness -- much of his bitterness can be understood. as mujib said, he disregarded the chain of command. put at the head of a government he didn't trust. let me also say with regard to the informal networks, many of the people who came in and that we believe were among the best members of government didn't

know much about afghanistan. they had been out for 20, 25 years. so no wonder why he would pick up the phone or bring me or mujib, others to meeting and said thousand -- now you really hear what the afghans think. those were the ones he trusted, the people he met during the friday meetings or dug -- during his much too infrequent visits to the provinces. but being called the mayor of kabul as we used to say in criticizing him is to a large extent a result of the fact that we did not, in the beginning, start building an afghan army immediately. we did not allow isaf to go outside of kabul, and we did not build the civilian institutions we could use to project power. so we made him also the mayor of kabul in many ways.

>> mujib? >> i think it's not just -- i'm convinced now that it's not tactical antagonism, it's more of a deeper pain that he feels. it may have been tactical at times, but so when i framed hi interview to him, he didn't know me, he didn't trust me, so he asked me for lunch first. so we had lunch, and i explained to him what i was trying to do, that i wanted to write this story of afghan, as start sort of a product of your 13 years. and i explained to him that i am entirely focusing on domestic politics and local governance which means there'll be no questions about your relationship to the u.s. but every couple minutes somehow he would drag the u.s. into it. and in very sort of deeply sort of heart-felt anger. so i don't think it is tactical

antagonism. and the ambassador mentioned some of the sources for such feeling, some of the reasons for such feeling. i think he feels that, to me, there's this hi pock arely city -- hypocrisy. he perceives an american hypocrisy to push him on certain issues and then say the warlords. some of the warlords that the americans allied with at the beginning of this war, then a couple years later they would pressure hamid karzai not to side with the same warlords whether it was general dostem, these two were the biggest allies to america when they first came into afghanistan, but years later when karzai was trying to build a coalition, if you read the wikileaks, how much pressure there was from the americans not to side with them. so that hypocrisy comes clear to him, that there is a two-facedness to the american policy.

and he told me a -- i mention a episode in the article. there's a meeting between general ibzed and president karzai, and karzai complained to the general that you shouldn't -- why are you helping some of these warlords who are causing me trouble? and the response from the general is pretty interesting. he says, well, they're one of us just like you're one of us. we're not going to be green on green. and it was a term that karzai heard for the first time, a term that after the insider attacks would become very common. but at the time it was a term that karzai heard for the first time, and the general sort of confirmed this anecdote he remembered saying something like that to karzai. so if you're karzai back in 2007, 2008, you are not putting all this anger publicly. yet you're expressing it to your partners in private. but you're not seeing any actions on it.

as the general said, the allies are either deaf or not doing enough. and if, part of it is natural, also, this perception of hypocrisy that karzai had. if somebody is in power for 12 years or so, on the other side of partnership there's a change of administration. and, obviously, that comes a change of policy. but one partner is the same guy x he perceives that change z -- and he perceives that change as hypocrisy rather than just a natural change. but there were episodes in private that kept triggering this anger deeper. so i'm convinced that it's no longer tactical antagonism. but i think it also is, it also goes back to what the general said, that he knows the united states far better than the united states or some of the u.s. officials have known him. and if -- and i think it proves a point in the bsa negotiations that the u.s. threatened with a zero option that if you don't sign this, we're going to pull

out all troops. yet several months later we see that that hasn't happened. so he knows how far to push the u.s. maybe sometimes he push the u.s., he pushes u.s. too far, and it's the u.s.' patience and not, and not sort of jeopardizing 12 years, because they know that president karzai will be gone pretty soon. but at the same time, i think tactically we need to give karzai credit that he knows how far to push them, and he's done that in the issue and the funding, military funding of the tush of, sort of -- touch or sort of u.s. presidents. >> so, general, why were we so deaf? you mentioned at the beginning of your talk how responsible or what share of the responsibility do we also have for where we are right now? >> well, i'm not sure i want to engage in an exercise of is self-flagellation here, but we didn't listen to him initially.

and and i think we didn't listen to him because in so many ways we felt we had the answer. i think in so many ways we felt that the exigencies of the operational environment drove us to make decisions that we would perhaps under other circumstances might have been willing to listen more closely. a couple things, he and i had a couple conversations about the issue of sovereignty, and i think both mujib and the ambassador hit it very clearly, and it's a really important point. as time went on and we were very clearly facing the end of the large scale international involvement in afghanistan, i think the president rightly -- president karzai -- rightly saw that one of the most important things he could deliver to the afghans was a is sense of their

sovereignty, a sense of their citizenship, a sense that they were as a people bigger than their perhaps tribal or ethnic origins. and i told him on a number of occasions that i did not feel any differently about that than he did and that it was, in fact, one of my principal goals and objectives, to do all i could, ultimately, for the afghan national security forces to be in the lead in its entirety. in the context of creating a stable and safe and peaceful afghanistan. but i also told him on a thurm of occasions -- number of occasions, and this is a conversation i've actually had this a couple places around the world, is that sovereignty isn't something that exists apart from the inherent responsibility of the people seeking sovereignty to act responsibly. so sovereignty demands

responsibility. and to be able to take responsibility for your actions and your words and your vision such as of it may exist -- and i actually think he was more visionary than perhaps some folks had given him credit for -- it also requires capacity. and so the frustration that we had often this our conversation -- in our conversations was, you know, mr. president be, i don't, i absolutely do not disagree with you on any of these issues with respect to your ambitions on sovereignty. but in order for you to be truly sovereign, you have to be able to take responsibility for the actions of the system of the judiciary or the actions of the finance ministry or the actions of elements within the ministry of interior. but you can't do that unless you have capacity. and that's what we were all trying to partner to do. and if you don't like our capacity building, tell us. he frequently told me issues he didn't like. we worked very hard to try to

lower civilian casualties and, frankly, we were pretty successful at that. we worked very hard at, ultimately, getting after the business of war profiteering and corruption associated with this. we created, ultimately, the combined joint interagency task force afghanistan which is where we brought all the countercorruption, all the contracting elements, all the spending elements, all the threat finance elements, we brought it all together where it should have been from the very beginning. we were not properly organized. that's the first reflection that i would give you. if we were to do this again, we would have to be properly organized in the context of understanding organized criminality in the environment in which we're going to operate, understanding it clearly and then being organized ourselves once we understand it and can see it to insure that we don't contribute to it or don't exacerbate it in the course of the natural development, capacity building and reconstruction that would have to occur. and i'm afraid we did.

and be i'm afraid that we came to the conclusion tar too late in the process that we -- far too late in the process that we needed to be organized this a task force about corruption and the denial of funds to the enemy in a manner almost as important as a maneuver task force would be. what was going to win the war, ultimately, for the afghans was less about defeating the taliban than it was eliminating the existential threat which i still believe was corruption, not the taliban. and he was right. and be we probably should have organized in that very concentrated manner much earlier in the process. we also didn't, i think -- and some respects he could have helped us more in this -- didn't see the enemy truly for what it was. and the enemy in afghanistan wasn't just the taliban. the enemy in afghanistan was a collective threat of organized criminality, what we call

criminal patronage networks, for whom the taliban frequently worked actually. the organized criminality, the taliban elements of what we call the ideological insurgency, fueled then by the narcotics enterprise. and we went to war in afghanistan very well organized to get after the insurgency. but not well organized in a law enforcement sense to help the after began -- hold afghans hold the organized criminality. and i had no authorities to go after the drug lords and the drug enterprise. if we had had that consolidated authority from the beginning, we could have been striking at those three legs of this enemy triangle from the very beginning. another reflection which i think is really important for us to understand. and in subnational governance it was an issue, again. the writ of kabul needed to be extended to the people on the

ground, and i won't name the names of the afghan commanders, but this goes back to the unwillingness of the president, ultimately, to embrace the really vital role of being the commander in chief, to being the moral figurehead to whom his leaders in the field who were shedding their blood every single day needed to be, needed to be oriented as a moral compass. and a thurm -- and a number of those core commanders, two-stars, and, again, i won't mention their names, but i've spent most of my time with them in the last six months. they could be two-star armies in anybody's army, and i'd welcome them in my marine corps, frankly. they took risks with everybody. but here was their ons ovation, and their observation was we are fighting and dying in large numbers to clear a piece of ground of the criminality of the taliban, and when the people finally can lift their heads up, can finally ultimately seek a

better life for themselves, there's no reasons of the government there. there's no presence of the government there. we had this conversation in the palace on a number of occasions. i even suggested your army, not mine, your army has cleared large numbers, large areas of substantial population numbers. let's take those areas and seek to insert into those areas your elements of governance at the district level or at the provincial level which represent your insertion of the presence of governance from kabul onto the ground to give these people a sense that kabul is in their lives. my question would be how often is this minister out of kabul and down in kandahar or in mihm was or in farah province, and the answer is not very often. and so there's a lot of -- the word blame is not the right

word -- there's a lot of responsibility for how we could have done this better. this is not something that either country has done on a regular basis. but i'll tell you now, the things that i believe we have learned about spending and contracting and countering corruption, the things that we have learned about capacity building, the inherent formula which i said before which is if you want to be sovereign, you've got to be willing to take responsibility, and you can't take responsibility unless you have the capacity. that needs to be driving our thinking on how we would prepare a country that was struggling from being a conflict-ridden society to a developing society to a developed society. and you can't get there unless you have capacity and you can take responsibility and truly be sovereign. >> thank you very much. then we have microphones, i think, on both sides of the aisle. we'll start over there with you, bill. and then just say who you are, the usual protocol, and let's try to keep the answers also succinct so we can get as many questions as we can in the next

half hour. and the questions succinct too. >> bill with s. i.t. yeah, very rich presentation and i think quite balanced on the positive and negative. one question, i think, is do you feel president karzai evolved during the 13 years in line with what i agree with the panelists were some major changes that occurred? and has he evolved during the recent period of transition? the bsa has already come up as an ample, but this my -- example, but in my view, the idea that the u.s. does not have a zero option, i think the may 27th announcement was a zero option this 2016. and it's going to be very hard to reverse that. so the question is, more generally, did he involve or was he stuck in the kind of tribal mentality which i think mujib has already said actually changed a lot during the war? second question, just on corruption and, i agree, there's plenty of responsibility to go

around. but the single biggest picture, scandal, kabul bank, i think it does not involve a enemy of aid money. it was afghans' own money that was stolen and misused. so i think, you know, there needs to be a perspective. and certainly, i think, on his side more could have been done. and finally but related to that issue of sovereignty, and i think this came up very well from the general, but more to ask why he didn't build sovereignty. you know, the goth administrative machinery, that's an aspect of sovereignty which is obvious. and then what does a sovereign government do? it raises money. very little evidence that he paid any attention to mobilizing more domestic revenues for the afghan government or the budget process or things like that. and it's the armed forces, and that's already been said. so, you know, was his use of sovereignty some empty term of being respect for him personally? i mean, because we though what

sovereignty means, and this already came up. but what does it mean when he asks for sovereignty? is it anything more than just personal respect for him? >> yeah. three easy questions. [laughter] >> in six parts. >> you all want to take a -- anybody want to volunteer for the first answer to any of them? >> i would just, a brief remark on whether he evolved or not. i think, i think i think he evolved towards extreme of consensus politics. if there -- if you ask him now -- voa did in an interview -- about the choices the made, specially about market economy. he said if he could go back he would not have agreed to it. it just -- if you look at his sort of trajectory of thinking, i think it evolved toward the

extremist consensus. and the first five or ten years you didn't have the capacity to go after corrupt leaders in your elite. now you have the government. you have institutions for it. yet every time there's a case of corruption raised, it is dealt with plate politically rather than the rule of law. so he moved towards consensus rule. he thinks he built institutions -- to me until 2009 it was justified he would do consensus politics. a day after the election of 2009 he was the most powerful man in the country. he could have spent the last five years of his administration building institutions and leaving behind strong institutions, and one way to do that would be to go after corruption of the elite and deal

with them through the institutions, but continued to deal with it through political consensus. >> on the cover of the book -- i don't have any objection to what you are saying. no doubt that there has been corruption that is unacceptable. can i add to that one thing. in order to systematically go off the corruption, you need a functioning rule of law system. it is just about the most difficult thing to build. you can build an army. even build a police. but to build a rule of law system is tremendously difficult, and very expensive. and i think we never really got to that. the u.s., i think, had four

different programs, uncoordinated, on this issue, but we never got into and it during this lead nation division, responsibilities in the early days, not much was done. and we lost time. then comes -- in that kind of security environment, environment of organized crime, who dares to go off the -- i'll give you one example from europe. a place called kosovo, as you know. which is 1.7% the size of afghanistan. and where everybody can read and write, well-regulated, the courts never compare to go after the corruption cases for fear of revenge. and there were never any witnesses who dare to stand up.

so it's not an uncommon phenomenon. comes to sovereignty, is it more than karzai himself? i think it's a question of respect for the -- for building institutions, and i do come back to what i said originally. i do not think that we have taken institution-building seriously. we have spent a lot of money on capacity building. most assessment of that capacity building, as you know better than i did, says that it hasn't worked. and in fact sometimes even has become an obstacle to building institutions. finally in 2008-2009, we managed to get in place a real civil service institute that was going to bring us thousands of people who could then go to the districts and so on. what happened? the donors don't finance it. they do finance -- discovered

now, they do finance the young international -- big western country, and given a contract to a -- contractor from the same country, financed by foreigners to be in the ministry, and this person earns $22,000 per month. for doing what? writing reports. substitutions, not capacity building. that has been our expertise. i do understand that he is furious about it because we have -- yes, we have built institutions that are much stronger than they were about but they could have been much stronger than they are. can i just mention? one other example. and i -- i was sitting in my office, march 2009, in -- i got

a message on my -- from richard, the assistant secretary of state, and a hero to me. will be asked to chair and it ban ki-moon will be there. nice to warn me about that in advance. i thought in due course i would know more about it in 45 minutes dater the story from brussels, announced that there would be a big conference in "the hague," and the much ban ki-moon would visit because he even mentioned this young -- so i was puzzled and i called the foreign minimum story sponsor, and i said, why haven't you told me about this conference? he said, which conference? what are you talking about. and i said, i'll check with the president. and so he called the president ask the president called back and said, what's this conference

you're talking about? a conference about his country. and he wasn't even informed. they debate about the surge. should there be so many troops. was he involved in or was the informed afterwards? he was informed afterwards about a massive increase of forces on his territory. that is what sovereignty is about. consultation, decisionmaking, and not only the vanity off one -- of one individual. >> very well put. a question over here -- >> one point on the capacity-building. i think the overall absence of -- it's not going to happen but the absence of a coordinating authority, the u.n. tried very hard, others tried very hard, but the absence of an

overall coordinating authority to bring together all the international efforts really was -- created a great difficulty, ultimately for us and for afghanistan. there is a lot that was built in afghanistan with no tale to it, no logistics tale, which will in not too distant future will require the operations and maintenance of the buildings and infrastructure facilities that afghanistan can't afford and doesn't have the money. and i really had a sense of this in the period of time of the insider attacks, where i sadly had a couple of my officers killed in the ministry of interior, and i pulled all of my people out of the ministry -- in fact all of the ministries -- i sat people out of the ministries until such time as we had a better feel for how badly this was going on and how far it might descend. what i didn't realize, what i

didn't realize, because i'd never gone from office to office inside theman industry of interior -- just how many international presences -- that's plural -- how much of on international presence in the billing until we pulled the troops out, and they were individual national contributions. so consequently, sometimes as the ambassador said, it worked against us. there was nearly fratricide because we had a company trying to do what it could to invest people and money in an outcome that might have been working or another element win the u.n. or element within nato, and we worked against each other. so frequently we were not billing the kind of capacity we wanted to, and that's what the president often honed in on, this absence of a coherent plan

for exalt building. you can point to individual moments of brightness and moments of capability that emerged from it, but that's what he pointed to frequently when he was frustrated with the international community on capacity building. >> thank you very much. usip and the panel for the insight. i am from voice of america, afghanistan service. i had a question for ambassador in regard to his remarks about karzai being the consensus builder while afghanistan two weeks ago -- less than two weeks ago was on the brink of a civil war in establishment of the government, and it took the u.s. intervention and john kerr where's personal visit to avert the election crisis. do you think karzai had the ability and the skills and the power to avert that crisis, and had a question, you said that karzai thinks democracy and accepts democracy and women's

rights and social participation as two of his principles, while at the same time the president has kept afghanistan's first lady hidden from the eyes of the world for the most part. do you think he fears that it's going to ignite in the same protest and reaction from the tribal leaders in the conservative sections of the society? >> john kerry's visit -- i will answer in the following way. the best solution would have been if the afghans could have solved this themselves. clearly in his inauguration speech in 2009, karzai said, i want to organize the election process, and that was after the interference trying in fact to

unseat him at the time. now that didn't work. that didn't work, and therefore i believe that the visit by john kerry -- i admire and respect the fact that he went there, sat down and came to what for me is the only obvious solution when it comes to accounting. if you disagree on how much to count, count it all. and -- but i must say, kerry is a hands-on dimobilehomes in -- diplomacy is admirable. sometime criticized but i think admiral in 2009 when he came we had a problem with the second round, president karzai accept the second round, he also played an extremely constructive role

and spent much of the day with him. and afterwards, karzai, i remember, says, john kerry is the american politician that i trust the most. nobody were in a better place than to do that. and through that answer, i have half answered your question, but avoided part of it. >> i think the question of the first lady is kind of intrigued me for a long time also. her sort of absence in the public sphere. if we go back to 2002-three, -- 2002-2003 there were interviews that showed that president karzai wasn't against her speaking out or being publicly involved, and she said she wanted to be involved in sort of healthcare for women and education and those issues.

what i know from her involvement now is that she does meet people, but she is not publicly involved, which is unfortunate. i think she is a very well-ode indicated woman. she is a medical doctor. and one thing that afghanistan has lacked has been female role models after sort of a long blackout on women in society, especially after 2002. so the morale was pretty low for women to get back involved in the public sphere. so she could have been a great role model. her education, her involvement. it's unfortunate it hasn't happened. i don't have a clear answer but i agree with you that it probably is being sensitive to the tribal realities and being sensitive to history, and in the early part of 20th century we

had rulers who involved their wifes in public politics. it didn't go so well. that was one of the reasons of sort of coups against them basically, social coups. so i think he is sensitive to that, and because he is a tribal person or he rules in a tribal manner, i think that is a factor that plays in her absent, but at the same time what intrigues me is how she was first involved and now she is not. i don't have an answer to that. >> a question in the back. >> good morning. i'm from consulting. a pleasure to be here. i have a couple of questions for the general. general, you are a real american hero. enormous respect in afghanistan

for you. i'm an afghanistan at least once a week -- i mean once a month, and even president karzai has a lot of respect for you, and he told me personally you were the one, you fixed the broken relations, diplomatic relations, between afghanistan and the united states. and also on your watch the afghan give you credit for decreasing the civilian casualties in afghanistan. >> thank you, sir. >> the question i would have for you is, afghans are really bothered by daily shelling of pakistani forces on eastern province, in afghanistan. that happening under the watch the nato, more than hundred thousand nato soldiers being there. i'd like to know your perspective -- and i'm sure you had meetings with your counterpart in pakistan, what was their sons. and also, of course, the flow of the terrorists, including

al qaeda, isis, pakistani, afghanistan, taliban, shelling the american embassy, most of the time i was there. how come we were not as american super power not able to tell pakistan to slow down? that's one question. the other one is for ambassador. ambassador to afghanistan, people love your book. it's a great book. and president karzai toll me in 2009 it was not because of you, ambassador, eide. he said he would have been insane because of you're assistant, mr. peter, and also holbrooke. could you tell us about that? what was going on in the background? karzai basically said what -- the karzai of today and not the karzai of 2008. it was just you, holbrooke, and

also your assistant. and of course you were the one trying to think of peace. karzai was very well managed before 2008 by george bush administration. he was a find -- we even call him a hero. the best president, the best this and that, around the world. and all of a sudden, he became a zero. the reason he was told me -- i asked him, what happened? he said, because i don't get respect from this administration. and that comes back to sovereignty. i took a group of google and youtube to karzai and he was so impressed. my god, those americans are such nice people. he says why the americans have diplomatic, don't behave like google and youtube. >> get rid of that allen guy.

>> all right, general. >> the border with pakistan is a very, very difficult piece of terrain. some of the federally administered tribal areas or the provinces on the eastern side of that frontier are very difficult. i'm going to say something about the border shelling and i want to be very, very clear about what i'm going to say because i do not want to appear to be diminishing the importance of dealing with it, and i know that my successor, joe dunford, has spent a great deal of time working between afghanistan and pakistan, in an attempt to deal with this. part of the shelling was a reality, some of the shelling was not. there were reports of thousands of rockets and artillery rounds

coming across the border. it was creating a real panic in kabul. and at one point, i got one of my helicopters and the minister defense, minister of -- one of the leading members of parliament we got in the bird and flew to kuhnar and met with border forces and then flew over the villages that had been so badly shelled according to reporting, and found that there was no shelling at all. there was no effect of shelling at all in these villages. no shell craters, no dead animals that we had been reported on and so on. but that didn't mean there wasn't shelling. we had to understand the problem and that was my point ultimately back to kabul, back to the security forces, and back to the legislature. the parliament. was to make sure we clearly

understood the problem because we're creating a crisis for ourselves in many respects. the first was that the border trace, in case you didn't know it, actually follows four different border traces. you have the durand line, which i never mentioned in public in the palace for fear of the response that would get. you had the border trace that afghanistan recognizes. you have the border trace that pakistan recognizes and then you have the soviet era border trace, and none of those are the same. they all go back and forth. and consequently, pakistan -- no excuses being made for pakistan here -- subsequently -- consequently, pakistan frequently shelled areas they believed were within the border trace and the round were landing on afghans and afghans could prove their border trace included them and pakistan was shelling sovereign afghan territory. we worked very hard with both

sides to try to create measures whereby if the pakistans saw ttp elements across the bored we would have the right of first refusal, would go up and get after these forces. bad reporting, bad intelligence, on both sides, made it much more difficult and really tough terrain to solve this problem. but i think in many respects, while that was a major issue before and it is still an issue if a single round comes out of pakistan and lands in afghan, it's a serious issue. to the point of cross-border movement of terrorists and insurgent elements, we work very hard with pakistan to create an environment whereby, if we could get pakistan to take action primarily in north ziraistan we

could solve problems of the eastern five to include kabul. just a very sad moment was the 24th and 25th of november 2011. i spent a better part of a full day with the general alone in his office over maps, working out the way in which we would cooperate across the border. he would drive them across the border, large forces present, along with afghan presence, would deal with them. i woke up the next morning to fine out that 24 troops had been killed overnight in a special operation in sallah la that broke the relationship with pakistan and we lost nine months of no communications whatsoever, and the force levels of the eye isap forces were coming down and the afghan forces were not operating on the border because

they had bigger issues with the taliban deeper in the east and the south. so while we had had excellent partnership across the border in 2009 and 2010 and 2011, that partnership ended at the end of november '11, didn't pick up back -- actually hasn't still picked back up again. the other issue we couldn't get pakistan ultimately to attack the insurgent elements on the eastern side of the frontier that we needed for them to go after, the haknis, we ran a very concentrated operation against the hakanis called knife edge, where we committed -- we being in partnership, afghanistan and isap, committed large numbers of afghan special operators, and they really proved themselves to be quite good as troops and it gave me a sense that we could accelerate the afghans moving into head to lead. but the cross-border coordination is a very serious

issue. a major security issue that hases to be resolved over time, and that's why my concern about the comment a little earlier about we have a zero option that is playing out here by the end of 2016. the new president, i think, is going to have to take a very real clear-eyed, realistic look at what the american policy is with respect to our advisers and our period in the country and whether he needs to speak to the president of the united states about changing the policy, given the operational realities in afghanistan, and i would certainly applaud that president, whoever it is, to undertake that very measure. >> in 30 seconds what happened in 2009? >> i think what -- the way it started, president obama decided to discontinue the video

conference that president bush had regularly with president karzai, and bush writes in his book, i made it's point of keeping in touch with him and not teaching him but advising. the only way to make him really was to treat him as a leader. ... approach and it was a debate between the vice president and joe biden just before they took over and then came over. we have a slightly troubled relationship and we met with the president and the first question is when does the contract expire? [laughter]

when the day was over they called me up to the palace and i can't remember who said it, was it him or me. that spicion that suspicion became stronger throughout the election process unfortunately. and i had established quite a good relationship because i was relieved, he was going to read choose his candid it