secretary chuck hagel's remarks at our website. we will have more live coverage of the washington ideas forum at 8:45 a.m. eastern on c-span2. the c-span cities tour takes book tv and american history tv on the road traveling to u.s. cities to learn about their history. this weekend we partners with comcast for a visit to colorado springs, colorado. >> in 1806, this man was sent into the american southwest to explore the region. very similar to lewis and clark who were sent to the northwestern part of the newly acquired louisiana territory. pike was sent to the southwest part of the territory. and from his perspective, when he came out here, he walked off the map. he went to an area that was unknown. when pike first sees the grand

peak, he thinks he will reach the top in a few days. but it takes weeks to approach. they reached what we believe is a lower mountain on the flanks of pike's peak called mount rosa. at that point pike wrote, given the conditions, given the equipment that they had at the time, no one could have summited the peak. pike's peak inspired "america the beautiful" written by katherine bates. and the view down to the plains from the top of the mountain inspired the poetry and inspired the images that are captured in the poetry of the united states. >> watch all of our events from colorado springs saturday at

noon eastern on c-span2's book tv and sunday on c-span3. former u.s. afghanistan war commander general john allen talks about the legacy of former afghan president hamid karzai. the u.s. institute of peace hosted this event. >> i think we can get started. my name is scott smith. i'm the director for afghanistan and central asia programs here. thank you all for coming. now that you are here, i should say that there's maybe one slight problem with the topic that we're going to deal with today. the problem is, is it even too premature to speak about karzai's legacy? after all, i think yesterday we began -- they began an audit of

the eight million votes according to a deal that secretary kerry brokered last week. it will be a complicated audit. i would not be surprised, having gone through something similar myself with ambassador ida, that it may be longer than expected. and i imagine that to a certain degree, the question that we're going to talk about today, president karzai's legacy, will 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. we thought here 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 that he will leave for the next president but also certain habits of govern he weing that

adopted and has become the model for an entire generation of young people who have grown up during that time. one of the questions i imagine we will look at is was this the only way of govern iing? another is the relationship with the international community and the u.s. in particular which will have an impact over afghanistan's progress in the next five to ten years, if not longer. the other thiricky thing is it' karzai's legacy but not necessarily karzai himself. i have a feeling it will be difficult to separate the man from the legacy. it seems to me that from a point of view of u.s. foreign policy, if not the foreign policy of the international community in general, it has been difficult to have an afghanistan policy. we have more had a policy towards president karzai. which means the tools and terms in which we discuss the policy

have been more sort of psychological, almost, than diplomatic. what is president karzai thinking? how can we convince him do this or that? has president karzai lost his mind? these have been features about this president over the last 13 years. it's a testament in part to the fact that obviously constitutionally, the president has immense powers which means that he is obviously the most important person in the country to deal with. but i think it's a testament to the sort of almost shakespearean complexity of his leadership and his personality. so with that, our panelists i assume are here neither to praise nor to bury him but tory to give us an accurate assessment of the country he is leaving behind, what he has achieved, what he might have achieved and how really enduring is this legacy? how much has the afghanistan that he has created in large

part over the last 13 years become a permanent part of afghanistan's sort of new dna or whether there will be aspects that can be changed by the next administration, whoever will emerge from this count. so it's a complex topic. i think we have an excellent panel for it. mujib mashal is an afghan jou journalist. it introduced the topic of the legacy. i have it here. the men who ran afghanistan, which if you haven't read it is worth a read. general allen, the commander of nato forces in afghanistan in 2011 and 2013. a crucial time during the transition to the afghan lead

for combat operations in afghanistan. and has dealt closely with president karzai across the spectrum of issues relating to that military relationship and in part the political relationship. finally, ambassador kai eide who was the second general of the u.n. to afghanistan between 2008 and 2010, during the 2009 election that i mentioned earlier and -- i will try to be an impartial moderator, i suppose i should disclose i worked with kai during that period. that does not mean that i will not challenge him on some points that he may raise. i will ask the panelists to speak in the following order. kai, general allen, mujib to speak for ten or 15 minutes. i may have a few reactions. then we will open it up to you for questions. with that, kai, i will hand the floor over to you.

>> thank you. thank you very much. thanks for organizing this. there have been many events here over the year i spent in washington and i always enjoyed them very much. i have to disclose that i worked with him. but i hope he will not be too critical today. let me go back to two statements made by karzai when i talked to him in may this year. one was looking back at 2002, when he had just been installed, he said it was really a euphoric atmosphere. i believe that 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. and then he says about his thinking 13 years later, i see afghanistan as a two story house where the tenant upstairs does not interfere with the owner and how he organizes the house, the tenant is welcome to stay, the tenant is welcome to stay, the tenant here being the united states, but the owner has to organize the house. and sometimes, he said, the international community has treated some afghans as insects. that's a dramatic statement. and then you wonder, what has happened in between this euphoric statement of 2002 and this bitterness that comes through in 2014.

today, karzai is seen as deeply critical of the united states. i believe that's unfair, in fact. i don't think he is. he is critical of certain action that has been taken or certain policies that have been pursued, but not of the u.s. and itself. i will come back to that. now, 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, it's astonishing after 20 years we have learned nothing about the afghan society. and then also, a misunderstanding of karzai as an afghan leader. when you meet him, he is not like the other traditional afghan leaders. but nor is he like the leaders who have spent decades abroad to receive their education abroad. he is there somewhere in

between. it seems it's easy to think here is a western oriented leader dressed in afghan clothes. and it's far from the truth. president karzai is afghan to the core. he is 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 institutional 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 that's his world. that is a world in which he grew up. and we tend to not understand that, unfortunately.

in discussing his legacy with him, in fact, in may, i asked him, how do you see your legacy? he didn't want to respond. he pushed the question back to me. he said, how do you see my legacy? can i 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. and i said, well, mr. president, but that's not the easiest way of bringing 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, the democracy must mean rule by consensus. if you apply rule by majority, this country will go through

conflict and fragmentation. and i think he is quite right. and 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 will spend mauch of their time abroad. he said, i admit he understood the situation better than he did. he understood the reactions in the communities in the south and east. much better than we did. and i remember so well the one prominent minister who traveled with the president to the south and then he sent me, now i am in the real afghanistan.

what did it mean to me? he was a person who had spent much of his life abroad and he discovered afghanistan. and i think mujib has experienced and describes in his articles how he meets with the elders during friday after prayer for lunch and discusses so many things. it's a very relaxed discussion. you wonder sometimes -- i didn't understand and mujib does understand what was being said. i remember myself leaving the meetings and thinking, what was this about? and it was about showing respect. enabling this leader to go back to their communities and say, the president showed us respect. in that sense, i think he is a master politician and certainly the politician that knows the country best. and then karzai the consensus builder, tremendously important at this juncture for keeping the

country together. and then karzai the reformer. and i must say, from 2002 through 2014, the country has been through a tremendous transformation. sometimes we overdo it a little bit and we become a bit propagandistic. you cannot say the man who has presided over this is not an important part that was process. he is. since we have mujib here, i rather ask him what is the -- d the media, you are in afghanistan where the media society is more vibrant, more open, more questions are being discussed over and over again than in any other country in the

wider region, in any other country in the wider region not only with male journalists but female journalists. i remember 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. there is an important change. he is also the reformer. did he manage to become karzai the peacekeeper as you wanted? unfortunately not. unfortunately, in spite of all his efforts and in spite of wishing that so much. and then we come to what you mentioned, scott, the elections. i must say, so far, all the rumors we have heard, he wanted to change the constitution. he wanted to put in a weak press for four years so he could return. he wanted to create this chaotic situation so that he could

declare a state of emergency and hang on to the presidency. nothing of that has happened. i believe karzai is a person who intends to leave, has intended to throughout this process. and let's hope that he can finish in peace and without any further confrontation. just one more minute, if i may. >> take your time. >> there's a tendency to see him as anti-u.s. very critical of the u.s. i will tell you one story. in 2009, just before the inauguration of the president for his second term, i gave a press conference. and i criticized the warlords and i criticized the corruption. and i said, i really believe that a future it'sfpeaceful stre

goes back to some sort of neutral status. karzai became very angry. and reacted publically. most of the media believed that it was because of what i said about warlords and corruption. not at all. he had heard that from me before. he knew. i had had six meetings with him trying to prevent him from appointing the candidate to the vice presidentsy. he knew all that. what did he react to? i had, without consulting him, touched upon the most fundamental aspect of the country's status and future. its status as a neutral without asking him. and he called me up and said, i don't want it 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 richard holbrooke trying to get rid of him, confirmed by bob in his book, in spite of that, in spite of feeling that he was neglected, in spite of feeling that 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 of 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 led the framework for moving forward on solid ground. 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?

>> scott, thanks very much for the invitation to be here this morning. it's always great to be at usip. these are important sessions. 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 in many respects. it is, i believe, a role of an institution like this to talk about how we can learn from this kind of a gathering, the challenges that leaders like president karzai, not only facing in his own country today but his successor will face and in other countries similar to the situation that we find in afghanistan. i think it'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 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. 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 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. i have don't think that means that any of us or all of us are wrong. it is because when one regards karzai and his times and the complexity of the environment in which he has had to operate and the challenges that he has had to face, it defies a simple distill lags on the man or the circumstances. so i took my role in this panel to be one of providing perspective of a military commander, on president karzai. and i remember well our worrying about my first meeting with him. we spent a lot of time 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 patrais. it was mid july in 2011. i was the fourth commander in three years that president karzai was going to have to deal with. 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 to 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 of days. nonetheless, we were able to get

some work done. it established a standard, i think, for a good relationship in the future. when i called my dear friend the u.s. ambassador ryan crocker to point out what i thought was a process foul on this first meeting in 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 exordinarily well read. he said, 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. we had a wonderful conversation. he knew us for better than we understood him. and the ancient culture of the pashtuns and the other tribes and edge nthnicities of afghani. we were at a disadvantage. he was at an 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 westfalian president in the context of a european leader. he is, in fact, a tribal leader. he is of the elite of the

tribes. and as kai i think probably said, many of those hard-wired paradigms were the first lens through which he would view the challenges that we faced and the crises that we would ultimately have to solve. none of that's 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. i would sit there wondering where all this is going. but invariably, he would 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. i will go through these quickly. but we can come back to them and question and answer sessions on any one in particular. 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 for most of the negotiating session, we dealt very closely on this issue. as you know, as a direct result of the spa, we ultimately had to

go into the negotiating of the bilateral security agreement as well. in conjunction with the negotiation of the partnership a agreeme agreement, he convened a -- this goes to an important point about the nature of karzai as a leader and as a politician. he was masterful -- masterful in managing and manipulating informal networks. when i say manipulating, that's by no means intended in a pejorative manner. he understood the people of afghanistan. he may not have been of their ill bei ilk, necessarily. but he certainly understood them and worked very well informally in those net woks as a tribal leader would to seek this consensus that i think kai probably talked about was his intention. he was frustrated with the u.s.

over our policy towards pakistan. 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. that was the issue of civilian casualties, frustration over pakistani safe haven, the cross border fires in 2012 and early 2013 in kunar, part of which was a minu a myth and part a reality. this goes to the issue of president karzai seeking to establish and to reinforce a sense that afghanistan was a sovereign country and to rest from the united states and other countries the kinds of respect due to that country and due to its people. and as we negotiated a contentious mou for my turning over 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 part of the mou, i had to cease the turn over 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. that resulted in a memorandum of understanding as well where we sought to move from being unilaterally engaged in night ops to one where we partners 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 forces from being in the lead to being advisory. but very importantly for me, i worked hard -- i know stan had before me and ultimately dave, on trying to understand 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 off 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 spending and our contracting processes under control. 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 occasions to get to the solution or to keep the crisis from spinning us off into space. the first was the downing of my ch-47 about a seal strike force on board within a month of my taking command. that was a great -- 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. it was a moment of real concern for him. we worked that very closely together. then shortly after that, u.s. embassy was attacked by suicide bombers. that was an area 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 robani, the head of the high peace council and all of the associated difficulties with that. then the solala event along the pakist pakistani border where troops were killed resulting in pakistan closing my principal ground line of communications over which 80% of my supplies flowed into the country. that was followed you will recall about the you aby the ur which was with the sad burning of the koran 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 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 of the 16 afghan afghans. 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. often the outcome wasn't what either of us desired. but it was these re -- these were moments where we worked very closely. 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. the united states in particular. but was unable or unwilling to take credible action to curb 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 improve the relationship. he would accuse the united states of arrogance, depp straighting i demonstrating his brifrpg brinks manship. we had to keep in mind as

americans -- i heard this first from dave and i tested it myself when i was there, that many of the 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 had raised the issue early along in the process and we were either deaf to the issue that he was raising or we under resourced the solution and ultimately didn't 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. we didn't solve it properly. he 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 as -- 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 development and ultimately civilian contracting, civilian casualties and corruption. these were all issues where if we had list ped to him earlier, and we had 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 resp t respects on many issues. a legacy takes many shapes and are formed in the eyes of the beholders. i'm going to take a crack at some of this. i want to be careful because it's difficult before he is out of office to talk about his historic legacy. 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 will leave to the afghans -- i suspect i will hear a bit in a moment from a very prominent afghan journalist, how they view

their president. from the many, many after gagha have dealt -- i 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 grunlingrun grudging respect for him. there was also a sense of melancholy, i believe, on the absence of his presence and that of his governance in their lives. i'm talking about sub national governance which we worked so hard to try to develop. but it defied my abilities when i was there. 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 enshine a permanent presence for the foreigners, many afghans were horrified that he seemed to be sacrificing their future in not signing an agreement and never fully explaining why or clearly understanding why. i think in some respects, in terms of a contemporary legacy, we see that much ground was lost by the president in that regard. reer regionally i believe pakistan will not view the karzai era with much nostalgia. karzai's views is of pakistan were seldom positive. they were frequently, openly expressed which made it difficult to manage. tehran will not miss the president either. for many reasons, but i think this goes to kai's point about

president karzai's journey and personal goals of making afghanistan a sovereign entity to be wreck on the with. the iranians were to determine even with a substantial presence in kabul, they had less influence over the president and over the parliament than they had hoped. bilateral security agreement left a foreign presence in the country which iran had 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, karzai, can say for sure, it's un -- is it 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 treasurer to afghanistan and thus tied 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. then there's the u.s. he is being judged harshly in the u.s., perhaps unfairly so and will be likely for some time. his inflammatory and provocative and smiepless 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. taken together, it was actually 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, the u.s. pulling out completely of afghanistan and 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, that we came close ultimately to a zero option. and we still don't have a signed bilateral security agreement. i suspect the soon to be inaugurated president will do so pretty quickly. 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, 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 in creating the kind of sub-national government necessary to extent the rit of kabul to the people. he had to coexist 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 demeanted and no he was not on meds. none that i knew of. but in a 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, the question whether the force from the past will succeed again

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 that 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 light footprint. 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. 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 hypocrisy 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-faceness 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 to 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 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, 2007, 2008, 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, ultimately for the afghan 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. we weren't properly organized. that's the first reflection that i would give you. if we were to do this again, we would have to be properly organized in the context of understanding, organized criminality in the environment in which 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 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 sub national 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. >> 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. >> do you all want to take a -- anybody want to volunteer for the first?

answer to any of them? >> i would just, a brief remark on whether he evolved or not. i think -- i think he evolved toward extreme of consensus politics. if there was -- if you ask him now and i think voa did 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. >> we're leaving the rest of this event to take you live to capitol hill for a confirmation hearing to consider the nomination of robert mcdonald to be the next veterans affairs secretary. some of the members of the veterans affairs committee are entering the room. we see senator patty murray

the u.s. had four different programs coordinated. and but we never really got into it. not much was done and we lost

time. then in that kind of security environment and environment of organized crime, who dares to go after the -- i'll give you one example from europe. courts never dare to go after the corruption cases. for fear of -- for fear of revenge. and there were never any witnesses who dare to stand up. so it is not an uncommon phenomenon. when it comes to sovereignty. is it more than karzai himself? i think it is a question of respect for the country and building his institution.

and i do come back to what i said originally. i do not think we have takenens tugs building institution build seriously. most assessments, as you know better than i do, says it hasn't worked. finally in 2008, 2009, we have an ins thut could bring out thousands to go into districts. what happens? the donors don't finance it. they do finance, and we discovered, they do finance the young international agency of a big western country.

and this person earns $22,000 per month. for doing what? writing reports, substitution, that has been our expertise. do you understand that he is furious about it because we have, yes we have big institutions that are much stronger than before. but they could have been much stronger than they are. can i just mentioned, one other examp example, march 2009, i got a message on my e-mail from deputy secretary of state for the reason of he wrote to me we will soon have a conference in the hague. and you will be asked to chair it.

and warn me about that in advance. i thought, in do you course i get to know about more about it. 45 minutes later, the associated press carried the story from brussels. there will be a big conference in the hague. and even mentioning that -- co-chair it. so i called the foreign minister and i said, why haven't you told me about this conference. he said which conference? what are you talking about? i'll check with the president. so sponta called the president and the president calls back and said, what conference are you talking about? a conference about his country. and he wasn't even aware. the debate about the surge, so many troops, was he involved or informed afterwards?

was he informed afterwards about a massive not crease on his territory?iot crease on his territory?not crease on his territory?t crease on his territory? crease on his territory?crease on his territory?rease on his territory?\inrease on his territory?inrease on his territory?inrease on his territory?crease on his territory? that that's what it is about. [ inaudible ] >> i think the over all absence of -- it's not going to happen but absence of coordinating authority, the u.n. tried very hard, others tried very hard, but absence of overall coordinating authority bring together all of the international efforts, really was a -- created a great difficulty, i think. for us and for afghanistan. there was a lot built in afghanistan with no tail to it, no logistics tail.

which, in a not too distant f future will require maintenance. which afghanistan can't afford. afghanistan doesn't have the money. on a couple of insider attacks i had officers killed. i pulled all of my people out of the ministry, in fact all of the ministries. i sat people out of ministries until such time as we had a better feel for how long this is going on and how far it might desce descend. what i didn't realize, because i had never gone from office to office were just how many international presences, that's plural, how much of an international presence was in the building until they all came running out. when we pulled the isaf troops

out. they so consequently, you know, sometimes, as the ambassador said, it worked against us. we would have a country earnestly try doing the very best we could, investing people and money in an outcome that isaf might have been working or within nato. frequently we were building the kind of capacity we didn't want to and that's what the president often honed in on. absence of coherent plan for capacity building. can you 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. >> thank you very much.

i'm from voice of america afghanistan service. i have a question for ambassador in regard to his remarks about karzai being the consensus builder. in less than two weeks ago on the brink of civil war establishment and it took the u.s. intervention and john kerry's personal visit to an election crisis, do you think karzai has the ability and skills and power to overt that crises and mujib add question. you said that karzai thinks democracy and accept democracy and women's rights and social participation as two of his principles. while at the same time, the president kept afghanistan's first lady hidden from the eyes of the world for the most part.

do you think he fears it will ignite the same protest and reaction from tribal leaders in the could be serveticonservativ sections of the society? >> want to start, sir?ould be c sections of the society? >> want to start, sir?uld be cos of the society? >> want to start, sir?ld be con of the society? >> want to start, sir?d be cons of the society? >> want to start, sir? be consef the society? >> want to start, sir?be conser the society? >> want to start, sir?e conserv the society? >> want to start, sir? conserva the society? >> want to start, sir?conservate society? >> want to start, sir? >> i will answer in the following way. the best solution would be if the afghans could solve this themselves. and clearly, in his inauguration speech in 2009, kr car zkarzai i want to -- [ inaudible ]arzai said i want to -- [ inaudible ] and that doesn't work. that doesn't work. and therefore i believe that john kerry, i admire and respect that he went there.

sat down and came to and for me, nsa and the only obvious solution is when he comes to the counting. count it all. nsa carries hands-on diplomacy in this respect. sometimes criticized. in 2009, when he came to the second round, and to have president karzai accept the second round. and he plays extreme constructive role and for those with him. and through that answer, i have

half answered your question. but avoided part of it. >> i think that the question of the first lady is kind of intrigued me for a long time also. her sort of absence in the public sphere. if we go back to it 002, 2003, there are interviews with her with the local media, international media.2it 002, 20 there are interviews with her with the local media, international media.t 002, 2003 there are interviews with her with the local media, international media. 002, 2003, there are interviews with her with the local media, international media.002, 2003, there are interviews with her with the local media, international media. which shows back then at least president karzai wasn't against her being out or publicly involved. she had said she wanted to be involved in health care for women and education and those issues. what i know from her involvement now is that she does meet people. but she is not publicly involved. which sun fortunate. i think she is a very well educated woman. she is a medical doctor.

and one thing that afghanistan has lacked has been female role models after sort of a long blackout on women in society. especially after 2002, so the morale was pretty low for women to get back involved in the public sphere. so she could have been a great role model. education with her involvement, it's unfortunate it hasn't happened. i don't have a clearance but i agree with you that it probably is sensitive to the tribal realities and being sensitive to history. and then in the early part of 20th century we have rulers who involved their wives in public politics. it didn't go so well. that was one of the reasons of sort of coups against them, social coups, at least.

so he is a tribal person or rules in a tribal manner, that factor plays in her absence. but at the same time, what intrigues me is how she was first involved and now she's not. i don't have an answer to that. >> a question in the back. >> good morning. it is a pleasure to be here. i have a couple of questions for the ambassador and also for the general. general, you are a real american hero. and there's enormous respect in afghanistan for you. i'm in afghanistan at least once a week or once a month, and even president karzai has a lot of respect for you. he told me you were the one, you fixed the broken relations diplomatening relations between afghanistan and the united

states. and also on the watch, afghan giving you pleasing civilian casualties in afghanistan. >> thank you, sir. >> the question i have for you, is afghans are bothered by the daily shelling of pakistani forces in afghanistan, more than a hundred thousand nato soldiers being there. i want to know your perspective and i'm sure you had meetings in pakistan, what is their response. i know of course they flew off the terrorist including al qaeda. pakistani, afghanistan, taliban. they've within shelling american embassy, headquarters, one time i was there when they were doing that. how come we were not, as american super power, we're not able to tell pakistani to slow

down? that's one question. the other one is for ambassador, ambassador to afghanistan, people love your book. it is a great book. and karzai told me, he said, in 2009, it was not because of you ambassador, he said would he have been insane because of holbrook. can you tell us a little bit about that? what was going on in the background. and what made karzai the karzai of today. and not the karzai of 2008. just you and also your assistant. and of course the one you were trying to just bring some peace. karzai was very well managed before 2008 by george bush administration.

he was a find -- we even called him a hero. the president pred, best this and that. and all of a sudden, and the reason he was -- i ask him what happened. he said because i don't get respect from this administration. and that comes back to sovereignty. i took the group of google and youtube to karzai and he was so impressed. he said, my god, those americans are such nice people. he said, why americans behave like google and youtube. >> get rid of that alan guy. go ahead, general. >> the border with pakistan is a very, very difficult peace of terrain. either the federally

administered tribal areas or prove ins on the eastern side of that frontier are very difficult. and i'm going to say something about the border shelling and i want to be very, very clear about what i'm going to say because i do not want to aper to be diminishing the importance of dealing with it. and i know that my successor joe dunford has spent a great deal of time with pakistan in an attempt to deal with this. part of the shelling was a reality. some of the shelling was not. there were reports of thousands of rockets and artillery rounds coming across the border. creating a real panic in kabul. and at one point, i got one of my helicopters and the minister of defense, minister of interior, national -- director

general of mdfs and one of the leading members of the parliament, we got on the bird and flew to kunar where we met with border troops, border forces. then we flew over the villages that had been so badly shelled, according to reporting. and found that there was no shelling at all. there was no effect of shelling at all in these villages. no shell craters. no dead animals that we had been reported on and so on.