find over a quarter century of politics and public affairs on your computer. now a look at security in afghanistan and what's role its neighbors will assume after a withdrawal of american forces. analyst from the rand corporation and a reporter with radio for europe participated in the discussion. this is an hour and a half. good morning. thank you for joining us. friends and neighbors, my name is moeed yusuf. i am southeast asia adviser to the u.s. institute of peace and manage the pakistan program here. this event is being put up by

the pakistan program at usip. and usip is involved on the ground in afghanistan and pakistan to promote nonviolent means of resolving conflicts. and we have a fairly sizable presence in afghanistan. less so but still modest sized presence in pakistan as well. but in addition to our work, we do underpin much of what we do in these countries by our analysis. and afghanistan, of course, the impending transition there in 2014 remains very important for us. not only in u.s. policy but what is happening in afghanistan but also the broader region and the implications regional policies have for this community to bring

together experts to talk on these issues and today is a great example of that. i may also mention another example on the prospects for peace in afghanistan. marc grossman will be speaking here and steve hadley, importantlier national security adviser to president bush will be moderating the event which will also feature rasheed and ambassador who is based at usip. so please join us for that event as well. today's event focuses on the regional afghanistan. every time we talk about how relative peace and stability can come to it, you will hear the term regional solution, and yet

there is not much work done on what really regional architecture means, what it looks like. what to begin with are the interests, the positions and the strategies of countries that neighbor afghanistan and whether, most importantly, there are overlaps in their positions which can be harnessed and leveraged to bring together a regional solution. can the u.s. incentivize behavior? if the region doesn't come together there will be a destabilizing influence. we are fortunate to have a panel sitting here in front of you, three experts who have truly studied this issue for a long, long time and who will be speaking to us today.

just very quickly in terms of f format, and i'll introduce them briefly, the full bios are outside available on the desk, we'll have each speaker speak for about 15 minutes after which we will open it up for a question and answer session and we'll have a good 40 minutes or so for that. we'll be covering pakistan, iran, and the central asian republics. we will be speaking in the order of mr. abubakar siddique, who is a senior correspondent of afghanistan and pakistan for radio free europe and radio central newsroom based in prague. he spent the last decade researching humanitarian and cultural issues. in pakistan and afghanistan and, most importantly, in the bordering region of fatah. and he co-authored a book with mr. reuben, one of the earlier

analysis of the pakistan/afghanistan dynamic when it came to peace in afghanistan. he'll be followed by shahrbanou tadjbakhsh who directs and teaches a program on human security as part of the masters in political affairs at sciences in paris. she is also a research associate with the peace research institute of oslo and is doing some very interesting research on regional conflicts in afghanistan and the central asian regional security complex as a whole and this would be very interesting, has written extensively, has also spent time with the u.n. in a previous life. mr. alireza nader will be our speaker of the day.

he's based at the rand corporation as a senior international policy analyst and was a lead co-author of "coping with nuke larizing iran." of course they continue to feature in the headlines here. he has served as research analyst, is a graduate of george washington university. i want to thank you all for joining us here. the last reminder i will not be fulfilling my duty of sitting here if i didn't ask you to please turn off or put your phones on silent. importantly because we are being covered live -- this event is going on air live and we also webcast such events so that our audiences in south asia who are also watching this and sometimes technology interferes with that. so with this let me turn it over to abubakar to begin the discussion. thank you. >> thank you very much. thanks for inviting me, and it's very good to come to your new

office. i think peace has finally found a home in washington. whatever today -- i say today will be my personal views and the main aim of the talk is to highlight, in my view, an alternative perspective because there is a lot of criticism of pakistani policies and my effort has always been to identify a areas where there can be reasonable cooperation and it can bring stability to afghanistan but where particularly pakistan can benefit from that peace and won't be paranoid about a stable afghanistan. a few days ago i was reading a book and it was written in 1930s by somebody who was then an indian writer. of course he became a pakistani.

and he and the famous poet and another person who was the grandson of sayed, did travel to afghanistan in the 1930s. when nader han was the king. it's an interesting account of the journey to kabul and down south to kandahar. and the view is very interesting because it's a view of afghanistan is an inspiring place for the muslims because this is -- i mean, along with turkey, the only independent country that's free of colonization. compare that to today's views, today's view of afghanistan, particularly pakistani policy is makers, people who matter, people who really make pakistan policy. there's a grand contrast.

in my view what i call pakistan's policy or the past 30 days of continuation, the it continuation is that for pakistan, pakistan's policy was always what i will call an afghanistan first policy. here is a country which has very good prospects of succeeding human development and being a regional leader, in being immortal and a country that has tremendous challenges, 180 million people, half of them still the health care -- i mean, we have still areas in pakistan which are comparable in terms of human development to sub-saharan africa and the country has been more or less obsessed with its security paradigm has been obsessed with fashioning the outcome in afghanistan to what people thought were their advantage to their liking.

and that has, i think, created a number of problems both domestically and pakistan has undergone the transformation from being a peaceful kind of liberal and tolerant society to a society where there are new conflicts almost every year, just look at the domestic, the ethnic issues in pakistan now and also look at the sectarian issues, the shia/sunni conflict. it also has an impact in afghanistan where pakistan has made clients but very few friends. this is despite the fact that most who are alive today have some kind of experience with pakistan. a lot have lived in exile in pakistan. most in their lives have somehow traveled to pakistan to meet

relatives, participate in a marriage, whatever. and yet one thing that most afghans agree on are the policies pakistans have not done good to us. and this is because the pakistani was more -- it was different from other neighboring -- neighbors interference or the pakistan micro-managed the other players have, for example, if iran helps somebody, they never really push them to align with somebody domestically or whatever their domestic politics was. if they wanted to alie with somebody, iran was not really pushing for it but in pakistan's case it was very different. and that has also, in my

opinion, created a confusion about what pakistan actually wants in afghanistan, like in 2006 with the people that we pointed to, our conclusion was there is this big problem. the rulers of pakistan had never recognized the line and you can bring in peace if the afghans recognized the line as perhaps a soft border and there can be two countries at peace with the recognized border and reasonable cooperation and all that. but i'm not sure if that is the scenario because one word that i find very problematic is the word end game. it's a misnomer. this is a country of 30 million people. you can't play end games with a country of 30 million people. one thing is very clear that

pakistan wants an india free afghanistan or at least an afghanistan where there is less indian influence and where india is not the major strategic partner of afghanistan. but look at -- if you look at recently all the regimes who are kind of left to themselves, particularly this is very true now about ckarzaid government. the same is true today in afghanistan and india has a strategic agreement. and pakistan could have prevented that by what i pointed to earlier, by making friend, not just clients in afghanistan.

and pakistan has a tremendous constituency to appeal to in afghanistan because of all afghans are exhausted, all afghans are sick and tired of fighting. and they want some kind of a peaceful settlement. but the key to the settlement, most that i talked to is in the -- not in the hands of the u.s. ironically but in the hands of pakistan. and there comes the whole issue of reconciliation, pakistan's role, pakistan's seven tralt in the reconciliation. there can be no reckonciliation unless pakistan actively helps. we know that prime minister yusuf made a very good statement that's a positive development and i was in pakistan in january

for three weeks and i heard a lot of positive talk about a new beginning changing pakistan and we really have to feel the effects of those changes. and that can only happen if we feel an active push from pakistan to reconcile some of the factions, and there are a lot of them, some other commanders in eastern afghanistan and the famous to reconcile with afghanistan and it will be a painful -- it will be a difficult process. it will also address the interests it has to address the interests of other neighbors of afghanistan. but pakistan is really the key to this. in a peaceful afghanistan, pakistan will be the main beneficiary. just consider that today there are like half or at least half -- close to half of the population of afghanistan is peshtun. there is a large minority, maybe

30 million to 35 million. historically most of the peshtun political movements and intellectual movements were based on the pakistani side. so they still look towards pakistanis for inspiration. there is the leadership contact. every other month karzai writes to one leader in pakistan and i think that can be a good building block. that is if pakistan is a state in its own reconciliation, that will be a tremendous breakthrough. but we shouldn't forget about the hard core strategic military analysis which i think is not entirely wrong because pakistanis look at an afghanistan where the americans are now rapidly training hundreds of thousands of armed men, and i think people have very strong doubts about the

sustainability of the military. just consider that in recent times afghanistan has like regular military -- regular police force but it also has a lot of forces like just the whole security guards have now been turned into what is called the protection force, 20,000, 30,000 people with guns. and pakistan has seen that these people -- this kind of military force can easily turn into militias and then of course pakistan has to deal with it. but this should not give pakistan an incentive to invest in only in some kind of a militant group or extremist group. it should give pakistanis incentive to do more human development, to understand afghanistan better, and to promote peace.

the basic point that pakistan can do and begin with is to just simply leave afghans to resolve their differences. it doesn't matter -- it shouldn't matter to afghanistan if karzai's ruling afghanistan or if tomorrow will rule. but the key to a sustainable peace will be in my opinion other neighbors also come in to build a peace economy. and pakistan is again the key to it. if you look at peshtoon, most is trade and transport and what you need to -- for trade to prosper and for transport sector to grow, you need peace. a peshtun driver, so it can have

many forms, for example, the whole road or like south asia, central asia connects, iran connects. pakistan already has tremendously benefited from the economic boom in afghanistan in the past ten years. it's just a matter of policies. and one last point. pakistan also has to do maybe painful but really necessary reforms, which will greatly affect the situation of afghanistan and fatah is on the top of those reforms. we know that pakistan has introduced some reforms but those are not enough. pakistan needs to fully integrate into its mainstream. thank you. >> thank you. thanks a lot, abubakar, also for sticking to the time. you set a good precedent here. may i now turn to ms. tadjbakhsh. >> thank you very much, mr. yusuf, and good morning to

everybody. i was just telling mr. yusuf that they all have one country, i have five, so i need five minutes more. i have five countries that i cannot lump into one. it's a pleasure to be at usip. the first time i am speaking here although i am familiar to washington. i went to georgetown so it's nice to be here and see a lot of familiar faces. there has been quite a lot of interest in regional approaches. lots of meetings in the past couple of months. we have met a lot of people in the audience here together, also with mr. yusuf in berlin, barcelona, in istanbul, et cetera, all everybody is looking for the question of regional approach. as mr. yusuf was talking about this project, the research institute of oslo, partner of usip, we are doing a project for the director on the regional security complexes around afghanistan. i've published a case that is

ava available on the website on south asia. a complex on south central asia that just came out and i'm working one on the gulf in the regional security complex in afghanistan. and also just to tell you that i did work with the u.n. center for preventive diplomacy on the project on counterterrorism. that was my life before. he was talking about -- and through that project we were actually able to sign a regional strategy on counterterrorism. an eu-funded project which is a real -- it was the first in the region. with all of that prelude, and before i also start talking about the interest of central asia as mr. yusuf asked me to do. i wanted to frame the question of the regional approach because i think that it goes beyond central asian case, it comes from the experience of the central asian countries and it does really shape a little bit about discussions in terms of what is this regional approach because what are we looking for? obviously as mr. yusuf said there is very different

understanding of what is this regional problem and what is the regional solution. i think whose positions are we looking at when talking about this type of problem? when we say regional problem about afghanistan we usually think that if the american troops come out, the regions go in because they are interested outside and they will be playing proxy either through their ethnic groups or they would play directly roles in influencing the government in afghanistan after 2014. this is what's the so-called regional problem we're talking about , but if you look from the afghan government's point of view, the regional problem is it doesn't have any respect in the region. afghan government, sovereignty, viability is under question by its region. so the afghan government wants its regional solution is respect from its neighbors. the american government's regional problem is iran. is this going to be the next iraq, the next afghanistan? are we going to have a war with

iran? that is the regional problem. taliban has a regional approach. have you noticed the taliban has gone to iran to conferences? they have -- they have meetings in central asia. the taliban has a very strong regional strategy, actually, i would say. the regional countries themselves, their regional interest is to be at a table because somebody said in one of these conferences the brazilian author, if you are not at the table you are on the menu. there is this feeling that, well, might as well be at the conference, the process is, et cetera, because if they're going to discuss something without us it's going to be against us. this is why iran engages in a lot of these meetings which everybody is surprised. of course they would come, otherwise they would be on the menu. so my first plea or my first kind of argument did -- excuse me -- we have to at least separate the regional problem

within afghanistan, which is the subnational problem, which is the ethnic problem, which is the problem of national reconciliation and outside of afghanistan which has to do with a larger region where there's extremely little trust and a lot of actors involved. we keep talking about near neighbors and neighbors that are not that near and then a little bit further and then further and so countries are now joining this near neighbor group that are sitting in extremely far regions and, therefore, it's a region where it's quite different than what happens within afghanistan and what happened. now the regional solution so far has been either too narrow, as if the entire problem of afghanistan has been pakistan. i've always been joking enough. there are other countries. either extremely narrow or broad. a process where you get everybody sitting around the table which means in a region where there are so many dynamics, so many security

problems between countries, to put them all around the table is to make sure nobody is a nonspoiler but we don't really get much ahead. so the large problem, the larger solution has been either too narrow or too solution. now what kind of precondition would be necessary in order to actually have a viable regional solution or to actually start going towards a regional solution? again, when i'm saying these things, i'm not off my talking points from seven is tral asia because these are all the things that have come around in central asia. this is, for example, there was one person who is very close to the uzbek government, i met in one of these meetings and since it was off the record, he said -- he got up and said i have three questions. "a," will karzai stay? "b," will nato go? and, who is responsible? i thought he was being problematic. those three questions are the three questions everybody in the region is asking. will karzai stay?

will nato go? and who is going to be responsible? so let me come to these questions. this is also the question behind all the cooperation you are getting in central asia, et cetera. the questions are there. so the first problem is what? i would like to add two more to the problems this person from uzbekistan mentioned. obviously there is no confidence in the region. it's a region where there is little confidence among the countries. but does that mean that we have to solve all the problems of confidence around the region before we solve the problem of afghanistan? this part of asia which means there is the problem of the kashmir, there is the russia problem, there is the iran problem. do we solve everything before we solve afghanistan, or do we actually have a process going at the same time when we actually have the principle of nonintervention and confidence building for the region. second problem about this kind of regional push that is so big, we think we have a region that

can come around afghanistan. now there is a liberal view and a realist view. the view promoted in the u.s. and in international community that because the countries of the region including central asia, pakistan, iran, have common interests in defeating nonstate actors, drug traffickers and terrorists and extremists, et cetera, that they are going to come around and cooperate. hence, or because they have interest in trade promotion, therefore, they will come together. that is the liberal approach that will have trade that will bring everybody together. there is the realist view that actually says in the presence of anarchy which i would say the region definitely applies, we actually have a lot of countries playing their own interests, security dynamics within each other, pakistan has their own dynamics. central asia, russia, countries i will get to have their own, et cetera, et cetera.

so compounded with the lack of capacity, a lack the sovereignty of the afghan government, everybody plays their own security problems. so the question is really do we have a region? are they really viable together because they have common interests? the third problem, there is a lack of trust in the future of afghanistan. and let me be the bearer of that message because i've heard it so many times and we should be denying if we think there is a mistrust. there is quite a lot of mistrust in the future viability of the afghan state. is it going to be sovereign, neutral, strong, is it going to be respected within? is it going to be respected outside? does it have good governance? is it going to go through the centralization? is it going to go through anarchy? through separation and secession? is it going to have ethnic rule conciliation? all of these questions are in

everybody's minds. the third -- the fourth elephant in the room, the presence of the u.s. in the region does -- is an issue for the region because there is quite a lot of clarity about the content of that part they areship with afghanistan and because of the less than good relations between the u.s. and iran, the question is for the central asian countries about how much there's going to be aggression for iran using the basis in other places. so the question about is it going to be the u.s. presence in the region going to be benevolent in terms of training, in terms of capacity, in terms of equipment and hardware and money which is what everybody wants or is it going to be more aggressive in terms of violations of sovereignty, et cetera, et cetera? this is the question that they are asking themselves. and, fourth, who is the actor who can actually create these kinds of conditions for a regional approach?