50 years in the future? i would like each of you to answer that the to extebt you can? >> that's a great question because it addressed one of the intouring questions of the department. we're trying to build buildings for 50, 100 years and things change. i think where we can financially and based on the urban environment or the environment where we're building, we do try to buy larger sites. we actually make a deliberate effort and this was not always done with the standard embassy design. we site the building in such a way where we know where a later an exwill go. for years, maybe forever, it will be a lawn, but we know in advance how we will use that space so it gives us the flexibility. the other thing we have done under the initiative and i think this is meaningful and reduces quast in the long term. we're looking at things like using raised floors, using demountable partitions. making sure infrastructure is sized in a way that within a

given envelope, you could have a significant increase in staff with very little cost. that wasn't true with the older model. again, i think the standard embassy design taught us a lot, but i think we can improve on it. we can improve on it in meaningful ways that give us more flexibility for the long term. >> and mr. green, as you respond to that question, i just want you to include from your research from your committee's activities, in fact, isn't that what standard build is supposed to do, is to include that? so isn't it mend it, don't end it, rather than saying standard build didn't include future an exes and expansion in consideration? >> it's a continuously moving standard that is done. let me just respond to your earlier question, though. what do we need 50 years out? you know, the ambassador wants a

bigger latrine in his office or we want 50 kaunconsular windows instead of 5. that changes all the time. i mean, we saw it here today and changed with papua new guinea. you had a plan to do something and all of a sudden the department says, no, we need more, for whatever reason. there's right sizing that goes on constantly within the department. there's the much publicized but i'm not sure how much it's occurring, the pivot to asia. what does that mean for those embassies in asia? more people. well, you know, five years from now, it might be a pivot somewhere else. i don't know that we're ever going to reach the perfect solution to say that we could build something that's good today and it will be good even ten years from now. >> thank you, and mr. chairman, i think the point that your

research and what we're hearing today is all about is that as you standardize and drive down the cost per square foot, the ability to build that few extra square feet and the flexibility is inherent in it, as you drive up the square foot cost, you inherently are building smaller and tighter and tight sizing is not what we need for flexibility. it's right sizing with a plan to expand or to add in, and hopefully as you continue your research and we get the numbers, we'll begin seeing how standard build can be made to do just that. and i thank you for your indulgence and yield back. >> thank the chairman. we'll now recognize a very patient member from michigan, mr. bent afolio for two minutes. just teasing. five minutes. >> five minutes, good. thank you, mr. chairman. during our last conversation, i forgot to ask you a very, very important question. when it came time -- when we were discussing london. and you clarified this, it's not

going to cost $1 billion, it's going to cost about $800 million. you don't look at how many employees it's going to house. you call them desks, is that correct? okay, so how many desks in the london embassy? how many? >> at least 644. >> 644. so what does that work out to? $800 million divided by -- how many did you say? 6 -- >> 644 desks. >> that works to be, what, $1 million a desk? >> some of our costs can be very high, including -- >> a million dollars a desk? okay, but i understand the risk in london and the cost per desk or is it meters, per meters? what does that cost? do you know the breakdown, how much it costs per meter or per square foot? i know here in america, we look at the square foot cost. >> right, for london, i don't have the square foot cost at

this time. i would like to add for london, though, for those members -- >> i think you already said that you -- you're selling property to cover the costs of the $800 million embassy, correct? >> yes. >> you did say that? okay, so you're in these old buildings now, am i correct? >> yes, these are old existing buildings. >> if it runs over the london building, takes longer than expected, what's it going to cost to house the employees in the older buildings per month? >> we're not expecting that to happen. >> you're not expecting -- seriously, for the life of me, and i'm sure there probably have been a couple government contracts that didn't go over budget and didn't go over -- or came in on schedule, okay, so let's ask you this. how many work orders or change orders are pending or in process in the london embassy for new

construction? change orders do delay a project, don't they, or do you add that? it's a change, it's going to take longer so we'll just move the schedule, completion date out. >> as you might imagine with over 200 projects and construction, i don't have the number of change orders in london, but what i would like to make clear is that while delays pose -- like on any project, a certain amount of risk, the department made the decision in 2006, many years before i was there, under a different administration, that this was the best value for the taxpayer. and i think it was a great decision. we, for $50 million more, are getting a brand new embassy that meets all of the security standards in exchange for property that we had been in for years. >> so you're going to meet all of the standards in london? >> yes. >> versus not in some of these

other countries that, well, seem to be look to me maybe in the future greater threat. let's talk about that threat. we had a while back, we had some secretary of state people tell us they don't do a risk analysis when it comes to risks in the country that they're housed. benghazi, they didn't really read what was happening, and a lot of our americans were killed. so do you do a risk analysis every day in what the dangers are outside of the embassy? no matter what country you're in? wait a minute, i'm sorry, i just answered my own question. you don't do that, do you? what you do, apparently, is in places like london, you take every risk imaginable and come up with a building that's worth $800 million at a cost of $1

million per desk. you know, i can't really -- i'm just thinking about the soldiers in iraq. you know, we look at the risk out there, and if we thought the risk was grater, and by the way, they shot rockets at us once a week. we put these concrete barriers in front of us, sandbags, and we would adjust. i'm sure because of curb appeal, we can do those things a little nicer, a little fancier, and take every single building including a modular or cookie cutter design and add to that building outside to address any risk that, well, if you actually looked at the risk outside of your embassies and addressed them, you could take proper precautions. but i will say, i know my time is running out, mr. chairman, but you have always had at every embassy in the world, the best security system you could

probably buy. called the united states marines. thank you very much, mr. chairman. >> thank the gentleman. now going to recognize myself. conversation with mr. cummings here. just a couple quick things and then we will promise we will end. i do have a question about london. london is unique. beijing was unique. there's some iconic properties, there are some amazing relationships, security needs. that's understood. there's been a suggestion that you're still on time in london. and on budget in london. what is your current assessment of where we're at in london in terms of budget and time? >> that's exactly the plan, that we're on budget and on schedule. >> what about the vat issue? where are we at with the vat

issue? >> i would like to keep that conversation limited because our conversations with our counterparts in bruton are sengsative, but i would like to say we're making good progress and we're -- we're comfortable that we're within the budget on that. >> and i appreciate that. i see that as a potential threat. they have, i believe, a 20% vat, which could obviously be a huge and major issue. and something we would appreciate if you would keep us apprised of. i had an opportunity to visit dubai, which was one of the last center's embassy designs. what do you find wrong with the facility in dubai? >> i don't know that particular facility. so i wouldn't be able to address it. but i would like to say that there are many standard embassy designs that i think work well for their missions. i think there are some that could work better and i think this initiative is improving on

something that was good and that did a lot of good. so i could look at dubai more closely and get back to you with comment, but i don't have any in particular not knowing in great detail. >> the general concern here is it just doesn't make common sense to me -- it's just not common sense to suggest that we're going to spend more time on design and ultimately, that's going to take a shorter period of time. i just -- i still -- we'll follow up. we've been talking for hours here. but as a follow-up, this is just conceptually, i just don't understand it. there have been some suggestions that standard embassy design, which is one size fits all, that's not true. that's never been true. we build nearly 90 different buildings. and one of the things that drives me personally, and i shared this with mr. cummings and others, one of the things that drives me on this is you have multiple gao reports and an

inspector general report that says, my goodness. standard embassy design. it's going faster and they're generaling coming in under budget. we never get reports like that. yet i look at the state department and they say we're going to totally scrap that and go to a different design, different way, and we're going to focus on architecture because architecture is diplomacy. you can shake your head no, but that's the video the state department put out. that's the video they put out. you're shaking your head. >> because i -- as i explained, we are committed to being on those time budgets, we're committed to that schedule, committing to meeting all the security requirements. i just know that we can build even better buildings. right? what we're doing is what we should be doing, what bureaucrats should be doing. we're trying to improve on a good product. as you rightly pointed out, the standard embassy design did require modifications for different -- we're taking that a

step further and making sure that it is not a fixed envelope, that it takes all of the lessons learned from that and allows us to modify our buildings in a way that's smart for the mission, smart for the taxpayer, and smart for the long term. >> and i really challenge those assumptions. it will play itself out. i don't believe they'll be faster. i think we have strong evidence that it's taking longer. i think the consequence is it will cost more, and i think the other consequence is we're going to have more people in harm's way. if you brought the people from papua new guinea here and lined them up and had them raise their hand and say, which design would you like? they just want to be safe. they just want to be safe and secure. it's going to be the most opulent and extravagant building in that country. under the standard embassy design, and those modifications. i appreciate the dialogue. this is just the general concern. you said in response to mr mr. cummings, the design portion

will take longer. again, the consequence, i think, will be more people in harm's way. it will take longer. it will be more expensive. and we'll have ongoing security concerns. i really do appreciate your participation here. i have no doubt about the sincerity of wanting to come in under budget and on time. i just don't think you can get from here to there. i find very few people who agree you can get there. that's why we need the documents. that's why we're going to continue to push the inspector general and the gao to continue to look at this. why we're going to continue to have hearings on this. so i do appreciate all your participation here. i know you care deeply about your country and the work thattia do and you're passionate about that. we want people who are passionate about that, but we also have an obligation to have this back and forth. that's what the oversight committee is all about, what congress is all about. it's part of the process that makes this country unique and better and the greatest country

on the face of the planet so i think again for your participation. we look forward to getting the documents from the state department sooner rather than later and this committee stands adjourned. today, live coverage of south african president jacob zuma's remarks at the national press club. president zuma is among the many african leaders in washington, d.c. this week to attend a white house summit focusing largely on africa's economic potential. we'll have his remarks liesk at 2:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. and as that african leaders summit gets under way, we're

asking you if you think the u.s. should invest more in africa. risk says, private u.s. investors should participate in the capital markets in africa where they see good opportunities, but we should not give u.s. taxpayer money to corrupt governments like we do with hamas plo where the money just goes for luxury lifestyles for a few leaders while the people are used as pawns and cannon fodder. and charl weighs in, yes, isolationism is not a viable solution and investing only in our country is just sticking our heads in the sand. a few months ago, i was in ghana and saw some of the impressive investment opportunities. the more we work in partnership with africa, the more we learn from one another and work to create a more egal teitarian wo. we invite you to share your though thoughts. while congress is on august break, c-span's primetime programming will feature a wide

range of political views and topics. this week's programs include the national association of latina elected officials and the networks nation conference. we'll also have a live update on 2014 senate races. c-span primetime monday through friday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. next, a discussion on the legacy of afghan president hamid karzai. former afghanistan war commander john allen was joined by a kabul based reporter for this event hosted by the u.s. institute of peace. president karzai leaves office this month after 13 years in power. >> welcome. thank you all for coming. now that you're here, i should say that there's maybe one slight problem with the topic we're going to deal with today.

the problem is is it too premature to speak about karzai's legacy? after all, i think yesterday we began or in kabul, they began an audit of his 8 million votes, according to a deal that secretary kerry brokered last week. it will be a complicated audit. i wouldn't be surprised going through something similar myself, it may be longer than expected. i imagine to a certain degree, the question we talk about, 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 leading afghanistan in one way or the other for 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. by that i mean not only the state of the country he'll leave for the next president but also certain habits of governing he has adopted and that have become the model, to a certain extent, for an entire generation of young people who have grown up during that time. one of the questions i imagine we'll look at, was this the only way of governing, another is the relationship we leave behind with the international community and u.s. in particular which will have a significant effect over afghanistan's development and progress in the next five to ten years if not longer. the other tricky thing about the topic is that it's karzai's legacy, not necessarily karzai himself, but i have a feeling it will be difficult in the discussion to separate the man from the legacy. in my own thinking about this, it seems to me from a point of view of u.s. foreign policy if

not the international community in general, it's been difficult to have an afghanistan policy, and we've often more had a policy towards president karzai, schmeans the tools and the terms in which we discuss this policy have been more sort of psychological almost than diplomatic. what is president karzai thinking. how can we convince him to do this or that. has president karzai lost his mind. these have all been features of discourse about this president over the last 13 years. it's a testament, in fact, constitutionally the president has immense powers, which means he's the most important person in the country to deal with. but i think it's also a testament to the sort of shakespearean complexity of his leadership and his personality. so with that our panelists are here neither to praise or bury him but to try to give us an accurate assessment of the

country he's leaving behind, what the challenges were, what he has achieveder what he might have achieved and how really enduring is this legacy. how much has the afghanistan that he's created in large part over the last 13 years become a permanent part of afghanistan's new dna or whether there will be aspects of it that can be changed by the next administration, whoever will emerge from this count. it's a complex topic, but i think we'll have an excellent panel for it. we have a young afghan journalist who just published two excellent articles on president karzai, including one recently in the "atlantic" that introduces this topic really of his legacy. which is, i have it here, the men who ran afghanistan, which if you haven't read it, is definitely worth the read.

general allen, who is the commander of nato and isap forces in afghanistan in 2011 and 2013. a crucial time during the transition to the afghan elite for combat operations in afghanistan. and has obviously dealt closely with president car sbrkarzai ace spectrum. and finally, the ambassador who was the special representative of secretary-general of the u.n. in afghanistan between 2008 and 2010, during the 2009 election i mentioned earlier, and while i'll try to be an impartial moderat moderator, i suppose i should disclose i worked with him during that period. so that does not mean that i will not challenge him on some points that he may raise.

so i'll ask the panelists to speak in the following order. kai, general allen, mujib, i may have a few reactions and then we'll open it up to you for questions. with that, kai, i'll hand the floor over to you. >> thank you very much. thank you for organizing this. there have been many events here over the year i spent in washington. i always enjoy them very, very much. i have to disclose i worked with h him, but i hope he will not be too difficult today. let me go back to two statements made by karzai when i talked to him in may of this year. one was looking back at 2002 when they installed the interim authority, he said it was really a euphoric atmosphere.

i believe the international community will come in and help clean the house and then hand it over to the owner in good shape. that was his thinking at the time. then he says about his thinking 13 years later. i see afghanistan as a two story house where the attendant upstairs does not interveer with the owner. the tenant is welcome to stay, but the owner has to organize the house, and sometimes the international community has treated some afghans as insects. that's a dramatic statement. then you wonder, what has happened in between this

euphoric statement of 2012 and this bitterness that comes through in 2014. today karzai has seen deeply critical of the united states. i believe that's unfair, in fact. i don't think he is. he's critical of certain actions undertaken or certain policies that have been pursued but not of the u.s. itself and i'll come back to that. why did we come to treat him the way we did? in my view, because of a profound misunderstanding of the afghan society and bob says in his book also, astonishing after 20 years we've learned nothing about the afghan society. then also a misunderstanding of karzai as an afghan leader. when you meet him, he's not like the other traditional afghan

leaders but nor is he like the leaders who spent decades abroad to receive their education abroad. he's there somewhere in between. it seems as it's his very attitude to think here is a western oriented leader dressed ipafghan clothes, and it's far from the truth. president karzai is afghan to the core. he's an afghan political leader. and he lives in two worlds at the same time. he lives in the old afghan political context with his culture and traditions. and he lives in the new world of institution established after the fall of the taliban. where does he feel most at ease? i think he by far feels most at

ease in the old traditional afghan world, because it's his world. that's a world in which he grew up. we tend to not understand that unfortunately. discussing his legacy with him, in fact, in may, i asked him how do you see your legacy? he pushed the question right back to me and said, how do you see my legacy? let me answer, mr. president, first of all, i see you as a consensus builder, he said, yes, a consensus builder, i very much wanted to be the consensus builder. i said, but mr. president, it's the not the easiest way of moving a country from a to b. and he said, how do you define democracy? my answer was democracy is ruled by majority. no, no, no. that's impossible in this country.

in this country democracy must mean rule by consensus. if you try to rule by majority, this country will go through conflict and fragmentation. i think he's quite right. i must say there's no other afghan leader that i have met who understands his society and its complexity. more than he does. and even when i was there in 2010 and later, afghan leaders spent much of their time abroad came and said to me, i admit now that he understood the situation much better than we did. he understood reactions in the communities in the south and the east, et cetera, much better than we did. i remember so well the one prominent minister who traveled

with the president to the south and then he sent me a message which read, now i'm in the real afghanistan. what did it mean to me? he was a person who spent much of his life abroad. and he discovered afghanistan. i think he has experience and he describes in his articles how he meets with the elders and the mullahs after prayer for lunch and discovers so many things. relaxed discussions. and you wonder sometimes, because i didn't understand what he does and what is being said. i remember leaving the meetings and thinking what is this about. it's about showing respect, enabling these leaders to go back to their communities and say the president showed us respect. in that sense, i think he's a

master politician and certainly the politician. then karzai consensus, tremendously important at this juncture for keeping the country together. then karzai, the reformer. and i must say from 2002 to 2014, the country has been through a tremendous transformation. sometimes we over do it a little bit and become propaganda the way we use figures and so on. not so easy we sometimes pretend. but there has been tremendous progress, and you cannot say that the man who presided over this is not part of that. he is. i think since we have him here, i'll ask him what is the media, for instance, you're today in afghanistan in a situation where

the media society is more vibrant, more open, more questions are being discussed over and over again than any other country in the wider region. any other country in the wider region. not only male journalists but female journalists. i remember one press conference with the president where one female journalist raises her hand and asked him a very provocative question about corruption. that would not have happened a few years ago. but there is an important change. he's also the reformer. did he manage to become karzai, the peacemaker, as he wanted? unfortunately not, in spite of all his efforts and in spite of wishing that so much. then we come to elections. so far, all the rumors we've

heard, he wanted to change the constitution, he wanted to put in a weak president so he could return. he wanted to create a cioug cha situation so he could declare a state of emergency and hang on to the presidency. none of that has happened. i believe karzai is a person who intends to leave, intended throughout this process. lets hope he can finish in peace and without any further confrontation. just one more minute. >> take your time. >> there's a tendency to see him as anti-u.s. but i'll tell you one story. in 2009 just before the inauguration of the president for his second term, i gave a press conference and criticized

warlords and criticized corruption, and i said i really believe that a future peaceful structure of the region, afghanistan goes back to some sort of neutral state. karzai became very angry and reacted publicly. most of the media believed it was because of what i said about warlords and corruption. not at all. he heard that before. he knew. i had six meetings to prevent him from appointing the vice presidency. he knew that. what did he react to? i had without consulting him, touched upon the most fundamental aspect of the country's status and future.

his status. i said neutral without asking him. he called me up to his office and said, i don't want this to be a neutral country. i want this country to be a close, non-nato u.s. ally. and he repeated that in his inauguration speech a few weeks later. what did it mean? in spite of the humiliation he had gone through during the obama administration with them trying to get rid of him, confirmed, in spite of that, in spite of feeling he was rejected, in spite of feeling he was not consulted, he said that that relationship is critical to me. his second term became, his last term as president, became one

long effort at restoring afghan sovereignty, and i believe he was right because sovereignty and respect for a country's sovereignty is a precondition for its return to normalcy. i think he has also done a tremendous effort in trying to restore that sovereignty and it will be up to his successors to choose 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 as 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, albeit, poor and war torn country. thank you. >> thanks, kai. general allen? >> well, scott, thanks very much for the invitation to be here this morning. it's always great to be at usip. these are important sessions, and i would say that important to any gathering like this would be probably at the beginning to take a moment to talk about why this gathering is important. this is not just -- this isn't about karzai per se i think this many respects. it is, i believe, a role of an institution like this in fora like this, to talk about how we can learn from this kind of a gathering. the challenges that leaders like president karzai not only are

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's also important, another outcome of a session like this, for us to hold the mirror up and to look into that mirror both as a people and as a country and to decide whether we can stand the reflection that we see. and then, finally, a gathering like this ought to help us to inform the policy processes of the united states in particular for not just our current relationship with afghanistan and other states in contemporary situations like this, but our policy processes for the future. so in that regard, scott, thanks very much for convening this group and for usip for putting this on. let me start by saying with a bottom line up front, which i think is what you would expect from a marine, i believe that the historical legacy of president karzai is going to be far kinder to him than many of

the contemporary opinions are that are expressed routinely about him today. and all of us on this panel were selected to comment or to offer our perspectives on what i believe to be an extraordinarily important individual and a very complex man. with that in mind, we're probably going to agree on some issues and we're going to disagree on other issues, but i don't think that means that any of us or all of us are wrong. it is because when one regards hamid karzai and his times and the complexity of the environment in which he has had to operate and the challenges that he's had to face, it defies a simple distillation on the man or the circumstances. so i took my role in this panel to be one of providing the perspective of a military commander, the isaf commander, on president karzai, and i remember well our worrying about my first meeting with him. we spent a lot of time actually

preparing for that meeting. it would define our relationship in many respects and would follow on what had been widely considered to be a strained relationship with general petraeus. it was mid-july in 2011, and i was the fourth 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 the western side. turned out the meeting was a pretty friendly meeting, and it was an opportunity for us to establish what i believe to this day is a friendship. i pledged him my support and my full energy in our partnership for the future, but not surprisingly afterward i was amused and a bit alarmed at the palace press release of our

first meeting and the many things that i had conceded to him in a meeting which had i actually done that would probably have taken a couple days. but nonetheless, we were able to get some work done. it established a standard, i think, for a good relationship in the future, and when i called my dear friend the u.s. ambassador ryan crocker to 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. so this began a relationship that would span my 18 months of command and where i would see him at least once a week and often frequently, and i sought to make this relationship something more than casual. i sought to make this relationship productive, but i also considered the relationship a friendship because he's really

a very charming, charismatic individual. he's extraordinarily well-read. he once loaned me one of his books and said would you take a look at this and give me your thoughts on it? a month later, marines take a while to get books read, a month later he asked me where his book was, and i brought him his book and a copy for me which i asked him to inscribe and we had a wonderful conversation on the anglo/afghan wars. he knew us far better than we understood him and the ancient culture of the pashtuns and the other tribes and the ethnicity of afghanistan, and in this we were at a distinct disadvantage, or put differently, he was at a distinct advantage in his leadership, and i often told people that you could make a fundamental error in your relationship with president karzai by assuming that he is

inherently a westphalian president in the context of a european leader. he is, in fact, a tribal leader. he is, in fact, of the elite of the tribes, and as kai i think properly said, many of those hardwired paradigms were the first lenses through which he would view the challenges that we faced and the crises that we would ultimately have to solve, and none of that is wrong, and it shouldn't be alarming and it shouldn't necessarily be surprising. it came from the inherent responsibility that we all had to understand the environment in which we were operating as military professionals and ultimately to understand the inherent nature of this leader with whom we would deal. he always was happiest when he was relating the details of afghan history. he was, i think, not just an afghan nationalist in that sense, i think he was an afghan patriot in that regard, and

sometimes he would be seemingly rambling from one topic to another, and i would sit there wondering where all this was going, but invariably he'd bring it all back to the present, and he would tie it all together very skillfully to address whatever issue or crisis we faced and would then use the very clear vehicle of afghan history to make the imperative or to make the point that we needed to solve the problems we were facing today. let me take you through just a few of the challenges that we faced together because i think it helps to define how he and i dealt on a day-to-day basis in our interaction, and i'll go through these quickly but we can certainly come back to them in the question and answer session on any one in particular because each one of these was a substantial lift in our relationship. the first was the negotiation of the strategic partnership agreement.

while ryan crocker and i sat at the table shoulder to shoulder for most of the negotiating session, we dealt very closely on this issue, and, of course, as you know, as a direct result of the s.p.a., we ultimately had to go into the negotiating of the bilateral security agreement as well, and in conjunction with the negotiation of the partnership agreement, the strategic agreement, he convened, and this goes to a really important point of the nature of hamid karzai as a leader and as a politician. he was masterful, masterful in managing and manipulating informal networks. when i say manipulating, that is by no means intended in a pejorative manner. he understood the people of afghanistan. he may not have been of their ilk, necessarily, but he certainly understood them and worked very well informally in

those networks as a tribal leader would to seek this consensus that i think kai properly talked about was his intention. he was enormously frustrated with the u.s. over our policy towards pakistan, and he was convinced that we were fighting the war in the wrong place. this flowed through a number of themes that we dealt with on a regular basis, some of which were, frankly, quite painful, and that was the issue of civilian casualties, frustration over pakistani safe havens, the haqqani network and the cross border fires in 2012 and early 2013, part of which was a myth and part of which was a reality. we also dealt very closely on the issues of detentions. this goes again to this issue of president karzai seeking to establish and to reinforce the sense that afghanistan was a sovereign country and to wrest from the united states and other

countries the kinds of respect due to that country and due to its people, and as we negotiated a contentious mou for my turning over of several thousand afghan detainees to afghanistan, that process and that sense of sovereignty came home in a very real way for me. and then, unfortunately, when president karzai abrogated parts of the mou, i had to cease the turnover of detainees until such time i was sure that they weren't going to be released ultimately to target us or afghan citizens of the afghans again. we also had a period of time where we worked very closely on night operations and special operations, and that resulted in a memorandum of understanding as well where we sought to move from being unilaterally engaged in night ops, spec ops, to one where we partnered with the afghans to one where i committed to him and to the afghan security leadership the development of special operations capabilities where afghanistan could eventually

operate unilaterally without specific u.s. or nato help. and then very clearly it was a time of transition, as scott properly said. we were moving the afghan forces from being in trail to being in the lead. we were moving isaf forces from being in the lead to being advisory in nature, but very importantly for me i worked hard, and i know stan mcchrystal had before me, and ultimately dave petraeus in succession to him, on trying to understand hamid karzai's sense of his ownership of the afghan national security forces as the commander in chief, but more importantly the ownership of the afghan security forces in the context of the conflict that was being waged. it was never fully clear to me what his attitude was. and then, of course, we dealt very carefully and often on the issue of corruption, me trying to get him to work towards

dealing with institutional corruption and him trying to get me to get our contracting and spending processes under control, and there were a number of other areas like the afghan local police and the elimination of private security companies and transitioning prts where we worked together very closely. but we also faced some world class crises which were very important in defining how we worked during times of real stress and crisis, and i think that was an area that defined our friendship, and we leveraged that friendship on a number of occasions to get to the solution, or at least to keep the crisis from spinning us off into space. the first was the downing of my ch-47 with an entire s.e.a.l. strike force on board within a month of my taking command. that was a moment of great concern for him because he believed that we were beginning to witness that moment on the battlefield which had been witnessed in afghanistan when the first stingers arrived during the soviet war, and it was a moment of real concern for him, and we worked that very closely together.

then shortly after that the u.s. embassy and my headquarters was attacked by suicide bombers, and that was an area where we worked very closely in the solution of that and understanding how that came about followed almost immediately a week later by the assassination of president rabbani, the head of the high peace council, the chair of the high peace council and all of the associated difficulties with that. and then the event on the pakistan border with 24 pakistani troops were killed ultimately resulting in pakistan closing my principal ground line of communications over which 80% of my supplies flowed into the country. that was followed by the urination video where u.s. marines were found to be urinating on dead taliban. that created a sequence of events in conjunction with the inadvertent and sad burning of

the holy koran at bagram which began the process of the insider attacks, which really stressed the relationship between the west in general, nato, and the afghan government and president afghan government and president karzai, but also stressed the relationship within the coalition itself as increasingly these insider attacks were eroding the consensus of the coalition to remain committed to afghanistan. and then that was followed by the mass killing, you'll recall, of the 16 afghans in kandahar, and each of these, whether it was a challenge or a crisis, permitted me to take the measure of the man, and i 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 -- these were moments where we had the opportunity to work very closely.

so against the backdrop of these many factors, i think it's important to take stock of president karzai's legacy under these many strains. he has very strong opinions, for example, 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 credible and decisive action to curb the corruption within the country. he remembers the u.s. role in the shaping of the 2009 election which caused a lot of animosity and antipathy towards the united states, i believe, while avoiding at the same time the matter of substantial ballot box stuffing. he was enormously critical of the u.s. policy toward pakistan but did not exert every effort to reach out to pakistan to improve that relationship, and he would accuse the u.s. of arrogance and malfeasance

demonstrating in the process his mastery of something else called brinksmanship, but at the same time he was confronting this, we also had to keep in mind as americans, and i heard this first from dave petraeus and i tested it myself when i was there, that many of these crises that we had with president karzai could easily have been solved if we had listened closely to him one or two or three years before when he'd raised the issue early along in the process and we were either deaf to the issue that he was raising or we underresourced the solution and ultimately didn't really solve the problem. so issues about, for example, the private security companies. that was a real issue to him, and it was a real issue to afghans, and we didn't solve it

properly. he ultimately brought us to the brink and the creation of the afghan public protection force was the result. not the perfect solution, but it was a solution. and the elimination ultimately of provincial reconstruction teams in terms of rendering them as capacity building mechanisms rather than service provider mechanisms which compromised the ability of local governance to develop. and then ultimately civilian contracting, civilian casualties, and corruption. these were all issue where is if we listened to him earlier and we'd taken the kinds of actions that he believed we should have -- he often provided us excellent advice in that regard, this could have reduced, i think, friction in many respects on many issues. legacies take many shapes and invariably are formed in the eyes of the beholders. i'm going to take a crack at some of this and i want to be careful because it's difficult even before he's out of office to talk about his historic

legacy, and that's why a panel like this is valuable i think in terms of how we look at the future and for policy processes, but i think it's fraught with dangers in terms of the potential for criticizing a sitting president. i'll leave to the afghans, and i suspect i'll hear a bit in a moment from a very prominent afghan journalist, how they view their president, but from the many, many afghans with whom i've dealt, and i have never asked an afghan his or her opinion of their president because i believed out of respect to the president and respect to the afghans, i didn't want to put them in that place. it doesn't mean they didn't offer their opinions. and i always had a sense of their open but sometimes grudging respect for him. they respected hamid karzai, but there was also a sense of melancholy, i believe, on the absence of his presence and that of his governance in their

lives, and i'm talking about subnational governance which we worked so hard to try to develop, but it defied my abilities when i was there as a commander. we can talk about that if you like. but they were very proud of him in many ways. they were proud that he stood up to the foreigners of which i was one, but recently i think as regards the bilateral security agreement, which would enshrine a permanent presence for the foreigners, many afghans were simply horrified that he seemed to be sacrificing their future in not signing an agreement and never fully explaining why or clearly understanding why, and i think in some respects in terms of a contemporary legacy, we see that much ground was lost by the president in that regard. regionally i believe pakistan will not view the karzai era and the relationship between islamabad and kabul with much nostalgia. karzai's views of pakistan were seldom positive, unfortunately they were frequently openly expressed which made the relationship different to manage. tehran will not miss the

president either for many reasons, but i think this goes to kai's points about president karzai's journey and personal goals of making afghanistan a sovereign entity to be reckoned with, and i think the iranians ultimately were to determine even with a substantial presence in kabul they had much less influence over the president and over the parliament than they had hoped, and the bilateral security agreement left a foreign presence in the country which iran had consistently resisted. nato i think will view him in the short term as an unappreciative partner who over time became increasingly difficult to deal with. while only the president, hamid karzai, can say for sure, it is likely that he always viewed the enormity of the 50 nation nato

led coalition as too intrusive on the sovereignty of afghanistan and ultimately on his own authority. but i think we may have missed or he may have missed the larger point, that those 50 nations committed their blood and their treasure to afghanistan and thus tied irrevocably the international community to the future of this poor and beleaguered country in ways we have probably never seen the parallel before in history. afghanistan, this poor state, this nation emerging from conflict whose interests were the personal interests of 50 nations in the world, i think that was a true advantage to afghanistan. and then there's the u.s., and he's being judged harshly, frankly, in the u.s., perhaps unfairly so and will be likely for some time. his inflammatory and provocative and sometimes disrespectful rhetoric aimed at this

administration, but sadly also aimed at the sacrifices of u.s. troops was compounded by a sense of his ungratefulness for the u.s. investment. again, perceptions, and this perception ultimately attracted the ire of much of the congress and the administration, and taken together, this time put the u.s. relationship and commitment to afghanistan in danger. when i was the commander, i did not seriously consider that there was a possible likelihood of a zero option. in essence, the u.s. pulling out completely of afghanistan and, frankly, taking with it nato and the international community. but i have to tell you, over the last probably six to eight months and in particular with the rhetoric and the problems over the bilateral security agreement, we came perilously close ultimately to a zero option, and we still don't have a signed bilateral security agreement although i suspect that the soon to be inaugurated president will do so pretty

quickly. and, unfortunately, this has tainted his short-term legacy overall, and i believe it will taint it for a considerable period in the united states. but the truth is hamid karzai is a man with extraordinary abilities but with human frailties. he was placed in one of the most demanding, thankless positions on the planet and was forced to operate within a largely incapable government emerging after a generation of conflict where he found not only difficulty in managing a national government from the palace but also in creating the kind of subnational government necessary to extend the writ of kabul to the people. he had to co-exist and operate with the largest war-time coalition in modern era inside his country while seeking to reconcile with the taliban and foreign fighters a rebellion and ultimately to bring peace to his people.

few men have, in my mind, ever faced larger challenges for so long with so few real measures and tools to deal with any one of them individually much less all of them simultaneously. so, yes, he was flawed, and, yes, he played fast and loose with relationships over time, and, yes, he was provocative, and, no, he was not demented, and, no, he was not on meds, none that i knew of. but in a few weeks' time when the next president of the islamic republic of afghanistan will lead a nation plagued by insurgency but one profoundly changed for the better in the 12-plus, nearly 13 years that hamid karzai assumed his office in this troubled nation, and that context while today hamid karzai finds himself often strongly criticized, as i said in the beginning a searching and detailed analysis of his administration and his

presidency and of him as a man will return a balanced appraisal of his legacy and how it was that after all these years of conflict, afghanistan could have come so far under his leadership. thank you. >> thank you, general allen. i think it was a huge amount there we will be able to engage with a little bit later on. now you've put me in the position of doing something that you wisely have never done, which is to ask an afghan what he thinks of president karzai and his legacy. so mujib, the floor is yours. >> thank you, scott. i'm humbled to be part of such a distinguished panel, and i wanted to read a few passages from the article i recently wrote for "the atlantic." it's called "after karzai" and it's in the current issue. i walked around for an hour this morning trying to find a copy.

i couldn't. so it tells you how well i know d.c. >> it's in everybody's briefcases. they're all reading it at every break. >> so i'll read a couple passages and then i will have a few remarks about the president's domestic policy, domestic legacy, and his local governance and in providing the context for this passage, i'll go back to one of the points the general emphasized and how difficult it is to predict a sitting president's legacy and how challenging it is. so here is the passage. the afghanistan that karzai leaves behind is certainly a more inclusive and cohesive country than the fractured mess he inherited. among my own peers, educated young urbanites connected to the world and provided with free space for expression, there's a growing sense of nostalgia for him. he's largely seen as a man of great personal dignity who,

despite his shortcomings, tried to minimize the bloodshed that my generation was born into. our afghanistan is shaped by principles karzai saw as essential and nonnegotiable but because of the president's style of leadership, these gains appear tenuous. under karzai a relatively free press blossomed, but every time threats against it emerged, it has been blunted not by the institutions or law karzai put in place, but by the president's personal intervention. the same can be said of women's participation in society which has grown tremendously but with few institutional safeguards. even the future role of the country's warlords is uncertain. karzai has kept most of these men off balance and he deserves credit for doing so yet these men are not gone from public life. they have continued to profit

from contracts and investments largely tied to the presence of foreign militaries, vested economic interests is a major factor that keeps them loyal to a democratic system. in 12 1/2 years, many have sanitized their images. shorter beards, fancier suits, more politically correct language. for better or worse, their sons and daughters who seem more attuned to democratic practices are now beginning to step into their fathers' shoes. sponta, his national security adviser, he says he doubts anyone could have fared better than karzai in such a fragmented society, and yet the next president of afghanistan will inherit a broken chain of command, weak institutions, and a variety of local powers that may prove difficult to bring to heel. all the more so because he will

lack the personal connections that karzai worked so hard to cultivate. the question whether the forces from the past will succeed again, this is sponta speaking, or whether modernizing forces will take the country forward, this has not been finalized. almost none of the achievements made under karzai appear irreversible, sponta lamented. instead, afghanistan remains a place stuck between modernity and its own splintered history. which way it will move next is anyone's guess. so i saw the president about a week after the first round of elections to find a successor to him in april, and 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, about 7 million people had turned out to vote, and karzai had proved his critics wrong as

ambassador eide said. there were a lot of conspiracy theories he would change the constitution, he would stay in power. so in april when i wrote this, all that seemed, you know, false, and the article went to print, and in the one-month period until the article came out, a lot changed. so to go back to the difficult nature of predicting hamid karzai's legacy, so in that one month or one-and-a-half months until the article came out, we had another round of elections, a runoff because the first round did not have a clear winner, and after that runoff, there were allegations of karzai meddling in the election. one of the front-runners alleged that there was a triangle of conspiracy, abdullah abdullah alleged there was a triangle of conspiracy 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'm glad that most of the questions that i had discussed in the article deals with his 12 years of leadership and his particularly his style of local governance, and i would like to make a few remarks about that and what sort of legacy he leaves behind. i think at the end of the day the legacy that matters is the legacy 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 the sense of euphoria that ambassador eide mentioned about 2002, when hamid karzai came to power, there was an enormous responsibility, an enormous mandate to build

institutions. afghanistan was pretty fractured over three decades of war, and even the palace that karzai came to in kabul, i remember during the taliban days, you know, people could take a shortcut through that palace if they were going from one end of the city to the other. there were no institutions. shepherds could bring their herds to that palace to graze on the gardens because the center of power during the taliban was in kandahar. that's just an indication of now we didn't have any institutions, and the biggest mandate for president karzai was to build institutions. unfortunately, looking back at

it 12 years later, that's been one of his weaknesses. he did not build institutions the way he should have for us. he personalized politics so much that the president as a leader got involved in very minute local matters. he had a disregard for the chain of command in terms of local governance, and he always directly involved himself, sort of undermining the mandate he had for building institutions. so one of the biggest weaknesses of president karzai looking back now was that. and when i asked him that question why ask did he not build institutions, he had his reasons, and that reason goes to two handicaps that he had, i think, over the past 12 years, which really shaped his style of local governance. i think the first handicap was when he took over the

government, it was a government that was handed to him. he did not have a say in choosing any cabinet members, any governors, even any local district chiefs. so he was put at the helm of a government that he did not trust, and what he did was to develop informal networks as the general mentioned, informal networks to use for his governance. so the first handicap was that. it wasn't his government. he did not trust the government. he relied on informal sources. the second handicap i think that he developed later towards 2009 was that he started mistrusting the internationals, and he started believing that his government was in the pocket of the internationals. so he couldn't trust his governors because they were closer to the internationals, and the internationals were conspiring against him. so these two factors played a major role in why he didn't trust his own institutions and why he didn't put enough effort

into building those institutions stronger. i will give you one example of what i mean by relying on -- by having a disregard for the chain of command. there's a man who was a former taliban commander, very interesting character, this beefy, big man, and if you look at his history, he basically fought everyone he worked with. he was first with the mujahadin and then he started fighting against his superiors. then he came to the taliban and started fighting there. and around 2008, 2007, there was sort of a consensus that the british troops had made a mess out of helmand. it was quite violent. karzai started experimenting in his local governance. he reached out to this local taliban leader and he tried to turn him and appoint him as district governor. it was an interesting experiment to see if he could, you know, neutralize the insurgency

locally, but the problem was that karzai directly was in contact with this district chief. going around his cabinet level ministry for local governance, going around his provincial governor in helmand, and directly talking to the district chief, and the district chief was quite a colorful character. every time he would come to kabul, he wouldn't let the governor know, wouldn't let the cabinet go, he would just directly call up the president's office and be like send me a car, i'm here to see the president. so in a country where building institutions should have been such a priority, he directly involved himself at such a local level and what happened in the process was undermining that sort of local governance chain

of command. i'll read you a couple quotes. my interview with the president got very sort of philosophical with his answers. yes, karzai is very traditional in his way of talking and in his beliefs, but one of his cabinet ministers told me that when he starts speaking in english, he seems as modern a leader as any out there because his education was, you know, in politics and philosophy in english and when he speaks in english, you don't see the tribal side as much. so my interview with him was in english, and it was a friday, which is a day off in afghanistan. he was in a good mood, so he got very philosophical with his answers. and i asked him about relying on these informal sources, informal networks instead of his own government institutions, and he said, my style of leadership was not in the sense of a western president relying on state institutions and government institutions, that is true. i relied the very least on government institutions, he said.

i relied the very least on government institutions. i was more in alliance with and relying upon the afghan people. all my decisions, my statements, were based on the information that i received from the people and the country, not his own government institutions. and i said, doesn't that undermine your mandate to build institutions? he said, no. the government has to be built up. the government doesn't have to be fakely admired and kept weak. he said it was a realization of a fact, of a true situation on the ground. the fact on the ground was that the afghan government was weak, that it had no capacity, that it had no means of movement, that it could not provide the president of the country with the information that related to the facts on the ground. that's why he relied on these informal sources of information and informal networks to run the country. but i think there was a sort of misinformed analysis in his decision to rely on these informal networks and tribal

networks particularly. president karzai wrote an essay in 1980s analyzing how the king used tribes as a sort of a bulwark of stability for his regime. he kept the tribes at a good distance. he had a good relationship with the tribes and that gave the regime 40 years of stability and he wrote about that, how that was important to the king. the problem was that president karzai ruled on that mentality about 40 years later, and during those three to four decades of conflict, that tribal -- those tribal structures, those social networks had been completely disrupted. what the conflict did was create a new generation of local leaders who had guns, who had drug money, who did not have local legitimacy.

>> karzai comes in in 2002 relies on what he thinks are tribal networks, but in fact they're a new generation of these local leaders that are difficult to distinguish from warlords because they have guns, they have drug money, and they don't have that legitimacy associated with tribal elders in the past. i want to comment on two other things about karzai's legacy over the past 12 years. one was an issue the general referred to of his views as a commander in chief. the perception on the ground among afghans is that hamid karzai never became a commander in chief, and i asked him that question. i asked him that, mr. president, when your soldiers die in the line of duty, you don't stand with them. that is a perception among the people. a few months ago there was an

incident 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 sri lanka that day. he canceled the trip using the death of the soldiers as a pretext but he remained in his palace politicking, building election coalitions rather than attending the funeral of those soldiers, and i asked him this. i 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 says he is a self-proclaimed, absolute pacifist. and the second reason he said is that i didn't believe in this war. that was not a war, this was a conspiracy. so it was fascinating to me, and

i asked him whether you see it as a conspiracy 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 him 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 karzai is that he's 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 man in the country. that shows he has political genius in terms of political

tactics, but the criticism is that 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 is so rare, no other leader would have the amount of resources he had, the amount of international support he had, yet he lacked a vision for the country. when i spoke to those closest to him who have worked with him over the past 12 years, they say he never defined a clear vision at this is where i want to see afghanistan ten years from now, 20 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 toward slow progress, sort of institutionalizing safeguards for women. so he had principles, but he didn't have a clear vision in terms of a model in mind that i want to see afghanistan like singapore ten years from now, 20 years from now. like an iran or pakistan or whatever. just not a clear picture and those closest to him say that it's one thing to have a vision and not publicize it. it's another to not even sort of paint a picture of that vision to those closest to you who worked with you every day in trying to help you move the country forward.

and i think the question that i try to raise in the piece in "the atlantic" but the question that is important to me also is 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 and his challenges, and i think to me that's one of the more fascinating questions, that if something like hamid karzai is not sure of his physical or political survival every day, especially if you go back to 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 5th, 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 a police uniform started opening fire at him from a very close range. he ducked. the governor of kandahar got a bullet in his ear who was sitting next to him, and there was a young man, a very big fan of karzai, he jumped on the assassin and wrestled him down. 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 man made hamid karzai's 12 years of governance possible. was the sacrifice possible? the young man's brother had a very emotional answer 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, more bloodshed, and maybe my daughter wouldn't be in fourth grade right now. so it's that mixed legacy, but i think 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 listen to kai and mujib who have both been in kabul recently and have asked president karzai these questions, but i think both of you minimized an issue that i think -- especially of interest to this audience and

important to the future of afghanistan which is 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, in paying the salaries of the government, and so forth. and general allen raised this question but, you know, the question i would have first to kai and mujib and maybe a reaction from john is, you know, it seems in the last year or several months, president karzai has sort of gone out of his way to be antagonistic and almost petty in his relationship with the u.s. not just the bsa, but things

like the release of prisoners in bagram, kinds of things that 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 it more than sort of a visceral reaction and then maybe after you two speak, general allen could have something more to say on that. start with you, kai. >> i have heard the same. you mentioned the crimea and 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 from the very early days, and general allen mentioned, 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 power 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 addition to that, there was

from the u.n. as well as the u.s. because the u.s. attention was already on iraq, they wanted a lightfoot print. 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 was the 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? almost inevitable that you have civilian casualties. and it's even more inevitable in a context that you do not know where the information or intelligence that you get from one person can be a part of a family dispute with another, land disputes, et cetera, et cetera, but it's quite clear that when some say he's now playing to his own audience as if it's a tactic, it's clear that what we saw in terms of civilian casualties, destruction of property, et cetera, harmed him in the eyes of his public very, very strongly. not only the u.s. became less popular, but there were protests in kabul against the president. and i remember the governor who

said if this doesn't stop then we will start a jihad against the americans and it was followed by the events in kabul. then when the money came in, what did the president see? he saw that the u.s. contracting system and subcontracting and subcontracting, et cetera, et cetera, left a little in afghanistan. very little was left in afghanistan. and he saw how some of the people became super rich and he felt our criticism of him for corruption to be hypocritic. it's not quite right. i'm not sharing that view.e1 he saw it as being hypocritic. i remember in the hague he said we will carry out a joint audit, the joint international

community and the afghans of the money being spent. and the international community said it does not relate to us, it relates to you. investigator general for afghanistan has proven beyond any doubt. so i must say i think he has reason for bitterness. i think he is grateful to see everything that has been invested, but as one very prominent colleague -- or member of his government said, we should be grateful, but it was spent in an inefficient way. then comes to the coronation and we have people that know this much better than i do. when i was 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 purpose, to what area, et cetera, et cetera. we didn't have a clue. how can you then coordinate? the capacity building, building the institutions that you

mentioned, one-third of it was done with 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. finally, i must say, the bitterness that is there today, i think we have to -- in the beginning the afghans did not have any institution and there was spoon feeding from the international community. and as one member of government said, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. much was accepted at the time, and then came a different

situation where the afghans felt that now we're strong enough to say what we think about this, and the bitterness increased, and you saw the reaction you had from karzai. and even one of those who spent the longest time abroad and came back as member of the government said, we really had to tolerate a lot at that time that we should not have tolerated. again, as he said, i cannot quote him but he will be quoted in a few weeks, he said the americans found it very difficult to distinguish between afghanistan as a sovereign country and afghanistan as enemy territory, and i think there's something true in 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 not really be in control. we talked about it all the time but we were very reluctant to, in fact, implement it i'm afraid. so i think much of his bitterness today, he also looks back at the last 13 years as we do. much of his bitterness can be understood. he has -- 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 informer network, many people that came in and 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 and others to a meeting and said, now you will hear what the afghans really think. those were the ones he trusted, the people he met during the friday meetings or 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 civilian institutions he 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 my interview to him, he didn't know me, he didn't trust me, so he asked me for lunch first, and when -- so we had lunch and i explained to him what i was trying to do, that i wanted to write this story as an afghan as 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 would 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 heartfelt anger. so i don't think it is tactical antagonism. and the ambassador mentioned some of the sources for such feelings. some of the reason for such

feeling. i think he feels that to me there's -- there's this hypocrisy. he perceives an american pi pock sy to push him on certain issues and say the warlords. some of the warlords that the americans allied with at the beginning of the war and then a couple years later they would pressure hamid karzai not to side with the same warlords, whether it was the marshal or the general. they were the biggest allies of the americans coming into afghanistan. yet a couple years later, when karzai trying to build a coalition, if you read the wikileaks, how much pressure from the americans not to side with dosdum. so that hypocrisy becomes clear to him, that there is a sort of two-facedness to the american policy. and he told me there's a -- i

mention an episode in the article. there's a meeting between general abized and president karzai and karzai complains the general that you shouldn't -- why are you helping the warlords causing me trouble? and the response of 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 after the insider attacks would become very common but at the same time it was a that term karzai heard for the first time and the general confirms the anecdote. he remembered saying something like that to karzai. if you're karzai then, you are not putting the anger publicly yet you're expressing it to partners in private. but you're not seeing any

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

yet several months later we see that's not happened. so he knows how far to push the u.s. maybe sometimes he pushed the u.s. -- he pushes the u.s. too far and it is the u.s.'s patience and not -- and not sort of jeopardizing 12 years because they know that president karzai will be gone pretty soon but i think at the same time tactically we need to give karzai credit he knows how far to push them and done that on the issue of bsa and the funding, military funding and future sort of u.s. presence. >> so, general, why were we so deaf? you mentioned the beginning of your talks the importance of holding a mirror to ourselves. how responsible for 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 self flagulation here but we didn't listen to him initially 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 of things. he and i had a couple conversations about the issue of sovereignty and i think both mujaib and the ambassador hit it clearly and it is a really important point. as time went on and as 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 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 i did feel any differently about that than he did. and that it was, in fact, one of my principle goals and objectives to do all i could, all the matly, for the afterman national 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 number of occasions, and this is a conversation i've had in a couple of places around the world, 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 think he was more visionary than perhaps some folks have given him credit for. but also, requires capacity. and so, the frustration that we had often in our conversations was, you know, mr. president, i absolutely do not disagree with you on any of these issues with respect to your ambitions for 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're all trying to partner to do. if you don't like our capacity building, tell us. he frequently told us issues he didn't like. we worked 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 prof profiteering and creating a task force afghanistan and brought the countercorruption elements together, the contracting elements, all the spending elements, all the threat finance elements brought it together where it should have been from the beginning. 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 criminalality in the environment in which you're going to operate, understanding it clearly, being organized ourselves once we understand it and can see it to be sure we don't contribute to it or don't exacerbate it in the course of the natural development and capacity building and reconstruction that would have to occur, and i'm afraid we did.

and i'm afraid we came to the conclusion far too late in the process that we needed to be organized in 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 because in the end the afghans were moving into the lead. what was going to win the war ultimately for the afghans was less about defeating the taliban than eliminating the existential threat to the afghans and not taliban and he was right and should have probably organized in that concentrated manner much earlier in the process. we didn't i think in some respects he could have helped us more in this, didn't see the enemy truly for what the enemy 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, what we call the ideological insurgency, fueled then by the narcotics enterprise. 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 afghans hold in the context of a judiciary the criminal, 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 then subnational governance. it was an issue, again. the writ of kabul needed to be

extended to the people on the ground. 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 or noted as a moral compass. and a number of those core commanders, two stars, again i, won't mention their names, i've spent most of my time with them in the last two months, they could be two stars in anybody's army and i'd welcome them. they were very, very good fighters. they understood their people and took risks with their people. here's their observation. their observation is we're fighting and dying in large numbers to clear ground of the criminality of the taliban and when the people can finally lift their heads up, can finally ultimately seek a better life for themselves, there's no presence of the government there.

we had this conversation in the palace on a number of conversations. 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 on to the ground to give these people a sense that kabul is in their lives. you know, my question would be, how often is this minister out of kabul and down in kandahar? or in other areas. 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 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 we have learned about capacity building, the inherent formula which i said before is if you want to be sovereign you have 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 to be a developing society to a developed society because you can't get there unless you have capacity and you can take responsibility and truly be sovereign. >> thank you very much. we have microphones i think on both sides of the -- we'll start over there with you, bill. and then just say who you are, the usual protocol and keep the answers also succinct to get as many answers as we can in the next half hour. >> with usip.

very rich presentations and i think quite balanced on the positive and negatives. one question i think is, do you feel that 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? and the vca is an example but in my view he totally misread the u.s. and the idea the u.s. does not have a zero option, i think the may 27th announcement was a zero option in 2016 and it's going to be very hard to reverse that. the question is more generally, did he evolve or stuck in the kind of tribal mentality and i think mujib said changed a lot during the war. second question, just on corruption and these points 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 penny of aid money. it was afghan's own money stolen and misused and 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 the issue of sovereignty and came up very well from the general but more why he didn't build sovereignty and, you know, the government administrative machinery, that's an aspect of sovereignty which is obvious and then what is a sovereign government do? raises money. very little evidence that he paid any attention to mobilizing more domestic revenues for the afghanistan government or the budget process or things like that and the armed forces and it's that's already been said so was the use of sovereignty an empty term of respect for him personally? i mean, because, we know what sovereignty means and this already came up. but what does it mean when asked

for sovereignty? is it anything more than just personal respect for him? thank you. >> three easy questions. >> in six parts. anybody want to volunteer for the first? answer to any of them? >> i would just brief remark on whether he evolved or not. i think -- i think he evolved toward extreme of consensus politics. if there was -- if you ask him now and i think voa in their interview and some of his recent interviews about some of the choices he made, especially about market economy, he said if he could go back, he wouldn't have agreed to it. it just -- if you -- if you look at his sort of trajectory of thinking, i think it evolved towards the extreme of consensus and relates to the issue of corruption, as well.

okay. first five, six years, first ten years, you didn't have the capacity to go after corrupt leaders in the elite. now you have the government. you have the intuitions for it. yet every time there's a case of corruption raised, it's dealt with politically rather than through the rule of law. so, in my view, he evolved towards the extreme of consensus politics than towards supporting his own institutions that he thinks he built institutions. if you look at -- to me until 2009 it was justified that he would do consensus politics. after the election he was the most powerful man. he could have spent the most powerful institutions and leaving behind the most powerful institutions. one way would be to go after corruption of the elite and deal with them but he continues to deal with it through the

political consensus. >> on the cover i don't have any objections to what you're saying. there's no doubt there has been a toleration of corruption but it's unacceptable. can i add to that one thing? in order to systematically go off the corruption you need a functioning ruler law system. it's just about the most difficult thing to build. you can build an army. you can build a police even if that's hard, but to build a rule of law system that functions is tremendously difficult. again, very expensive. and i think we never really got to that. the u.s., i think, had four different programs,

uncoordinated on this. we never really got into it, and i think during this elite nation, division of responsibility, the italians had the judiciary. not much is done. we lost time. then comes gaza. in that kind of security environment of organized crime who dares to go after the criminals? i'll give you one example from europe. a place called dokosovo as you know which is 1.7% the size of afghanistan, and where everybody can read and write. literally well regulated, but the courts never dare to go after the corruption cases for fear of revenge. and there were never any witnesses who dare to stand up. it's not an uncommon phenomenon.

when it comes to sovereignty, is it more than karzai himself? i think it's a question of out of respect for the building the 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 in the capacity building. most assessments of that capacity building, as you know better than i did, said that it hasn't worked, and in fact sometimes it even has become an obstacle to building institutions. finally in 2008, 2009 we managed to get in place a real serious service institute that is going to bring out thousands of people who could then go to the districts and so on. what happens? the donors don't finance it. they do finance. i discovered they do finance a

young international via donor agency, big western country who has been given this contractor from the same country and financed by foreigners to be in the ministry, and this person earns $22,000 per month. for doing what? writing reports. capacity substitution, not capacity building. that has been our expertise. i understand he's furious about it because, yes, we have businesses that are much stronger than they were before but they could have been much stronger than they are. can i just mention one other example. i mentioned it to somebody before. march 2009, i got a message. it was from richard belcher,

then assistant secretary of state for the region. he wrote to me. can we soon have a big conference in the haig and you would be asked to chair it and when can we build it. last night they warned me about that. so i thought, you know, in due course i'll get to know more about it. 45 minutes later associated press carried the story from brussels where they had announced that there would be a big conference in the haig in march and ban ki-moon would be there. he even mentioned that i would co-chair it. i was puzzled. i called the foreign minister and i said, my friend, why haven't you told me about this conference? he said, which conference? what are you talking about? i said, i'll speak with the president. so he called the president and 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. the debate about the surge. should there be so on and so many troops. was he involved or was he informed afterwards? he was informed afterwards about a massive increase of forces on his territory. that's what sovereignty is about, consultation, decision making, not only the vanity of one individual. >> quick comment? >> very well. >> we had 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 other

international efforts really was -- created a great difficulty, i think, ultimately for us and for afghanistan. there was a lot that was built in afghanistan with no tail to it, with no logistics tail which will in the not too distant future require that the operations and maintenance of these buildings and infrastructure facilities that afghanistan can't afford, afghanistan 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 ministry. 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 had never gone from office to office

inside the ministry of interior were just how many international presences, that's plural, how much of an international presence was in that building until they all came running out when we pulled the isaf troops out, and they had nothing to do with isaf. they were individual national contributions, so consequently, you know, sometimes as the ambassador said, it worked against us. there was nearly fratracide because we had a country earnestly trying to do the very best it could in investing people and money in an outcome that isaf might have been working or another element within the u.n. or an element within nato. we worked against each other. so frequently we were not building the kind of capacity that we wanted to, and that's what the president honed in on. this absence of a clear plan for capacity building. you could point to individual moments of brightness and

moments of capability that emerged from it, but that's what he pointed to very frequently when he was frustrated with the international community on capacity building. >> all right. thank you very much. thank you for the panel for the insight. i'm from voice of america. i have a question for the ambassador in regard to his remarks about karzai being the consensus builder while afghanistan two weeks ago or less than two weeks ago was on the brink of a civil war and establishment of a parallel government and it took the u.s. intervention and john kerry's personal visit to avert the election crisis. do you see -- do you think karzai had the ability and the skills and the power to avert that crisis? and i had another question. you said karzai thinks democracy and acceptmo