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Conference Program

The 23rd Annual Camden Conference took place February 19 – 21, 2010 live at the historic Camden Opera House

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Afghanistan, Pakistan, India — Crossroads of Conflict

The 2010 conference will focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan and India – an area termed the most challenging in the world by many 2009 conference speakers. No assessment or understanding of the situation in Afghanistan can be separated from attention to critical factors and developments in neighboring Pakistan which in turn leads to a focus upon the complex and volatile relations between Pakistan and India. The February 2010 conference will offer both specific and overview presentations devoted to the broad array of issues raised within this turbulent region as well as the role of U.S. policies and programs in this “crossroads of conflict.”

The Conference convened on Friday evening, February 19th, with the keynote address at 8PM, and continued on Saturday, February 20th from 8:30AM – 5PM and again on Sunday, February 21st from 8:30AM-12:30PM.

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The following is the Program for the  2010  Camden Conference.  Each presentation was followed by a Q & A Session.

FRIDAY,  FEBRUARY 19

• 8 P.M. KEYNOTE  ADDRESS — AHMED RASHID “Pakistan, Afghanistan and U.S. Policy in the Region” Pakistani journalist and author of Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia and Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20

• 8:30 AM     Opening Remarks
• 8:45 AM      WHITNEY AZOY   “Is There an Afghanistan?” Cultural Anthropologist with 40 years experience working with and in Afghanistan; immediate past Director of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies in Kabul. Author of Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan.
• 9:30 AM      SAMINA QURAESHI   “What Future for Pakistan?” Award-winning Pakistani educator, designer, artist, and author. Earned an M.F.A. from Yale University.  Specialist in the cultures of South Asia and the internal challenges faced by Pakistan.
• 10:15 AM     BREAK
• 10:45 AM     TERESITA SCHAFFER   “Afghanistan and Pakistan in Turmoil—The View from India” Thirty year career in the U.S. State Department including Ambassador to Sri Lanka; postings to Islamabad, New Delhi, and Dhaka as well as Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia.  Now at C.S.I.S. in Washington, D.C.
• 11:30 AM     Q & A – PANEL OF AZOY, QURAESHI and SCHAFFER
• NOON          LUNCH BREAK
• 1:45 PM       LARRY GOODSON   “U.S. Military Strategy in Afghanistan” Professor of Middle East Studies, Department of National Security and Strategy, U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA.  Author of Afghanistan’s Endless War; State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban (2001).
• 2:30 PM       PAUL PILLAR   “Assessing U.S. Policies and Prospects in South Asia” Twenty-eight year career in U.S. Intelligence at the highest levels with major attention to South Asia.  Now Director of Graduate Studies, Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
• 3:15 PM      BREAK
• 3:45 PM      RONALD NEUMANN   “U.S. Policies and Prospects in South Asia” President, American Academy of Diplomacy; retired after long career with State Department including posts as U.S. Ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain, and (from 2005-2007) Afghanistan.
• 4:30 PM      Q & A – PANEL OF GOODSON, PILLAR, NEUMANN and RASHID
• 5:00 PM      ADJOURN FOR THE DAY

SUNDAY,  FEBRUARY 21

• 8:45 AM ATHANASIOS  MOULAKIS   “The  View  From  Kabul” Chief Academic Officer and Professor of Government at The American University of Afghanistan. Prominent positions as scholar and educator in Europe and the U.S.
• 9:35 AM NICHOLAS BURNS “Lessons for American Policy” Retired from distinguished twenty-seven year career in the U.S. State Department including service as U.S. Ambassador to Greece and NATO and culminating as Under Secretary of State.  Now at the Kennedy School, Harvard University.
• 10:25 AM BREAK
• 11:00 AM Q & A – FINAL PANEL OF ALL SPEAKERS
  
• 12:30 PM CONFERENCE ADJOURNS

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2010 Conference Speakers

2010 Conference Speakers will be listed here as they are confirmed. Please check the website regularly for updates as they become available or sign up to receive our E-Newsletter.

Keynote: Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist, scholar, and best-selling author of several books on the complex region of Central Asia. His 2000 book, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, was used extensively by American analysts in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Most recently in Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (2008), Rashid examines the region and the corridors of power in Washington and Europe to see how the promised nation building in these countries has progressed. His conclusions are devastating: An unstable and nuclear armed Pakistan, a renewed al’ Qaeda profiting from a booming opium trade, and a Taliban resurgence and reconquest. While Iraq continues to attract most of American media and military might, Rashid argues that Pakistan and Afghanistan are where the conflict will finally be played out and that these failing states pose a graver threat to global security than the Middle East. Rashid attended Malvern College, England, Government College Lahore, and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He serves as the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Daily Telegraph. He also writes for the Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and academic journals. He appears regularly on international TV and radio networks such as CNN, PBS and BBC World. His commentary also appears in the Washington Post’s PostGlobal segment. Rashid lives in Lahore, Pakistan with his wife and two children.

R. Nicholas Burns

Nicholas Burns is currently Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics as well as Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Kennedy School, Harvard University. He retired from the State Department in April, 2008 after a distinguished career spanning twenty-seven years.  From 2005 until his retirement Burns was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs—the third-ranking position in the State Department—where he led U.S. negotiations with such countries as Iran, India, and Kosovo, and supervised U.S. diplomacy in all regions of the world.  Earlier Burns was U.S. Ambassador to NATO and to Greece. He was the State Department Spokesman for two years and spent five years on the National Security Council staff including as Special Assistant to President Clinton focusing on the former Soviet Union. Later he was Director for Soviet Affairs on the NSC under President Bush.  Earlier in his career Burns was posted in Egypt and Mauritania and served as Political Officer at the American Consulate General in Jerusalem. He is on many boards including the Atlantic Council, the Rockefeller Brothers, and the Appeal of Conscience as well as a proud member of Red Sox Nation.

G. Whitney Azoy

Dr. G. Whitney Azoy is a cultural anthropologist with nearly 40 years experience working in and with Afghanistan and the Muslim world.  Dr. Azoy is a four-time Fulbright scholar, author of Buzkashi :Game and Power in Afghanistan, and National Geographic film maker, who is currently co-producing a documentary film entitled Afghanistan: A Nation of Poets.  Dr. Azoy consulted with the Department of Defense following 9/11, collaborated with the International Security and Assistance Force and the U.S. Army’s Counter-Intelligence Academy, and joined the Foreign Service in 1971 serving as a cultural officer in Kabul and Tehran.  From 2005 to 2007, Dr. Azoy served as Center Director and Senior Fellow of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies in Kabul.  He has been a guest on the Lehrer News Hour, CNN International, and other foreign news programs.

Dr. Azoy is a graduate of Deerfield and Princeton and began studying graduate anthropology in 1973 at the University of Virginia.  After receiving his doctorate in 1979, he began teaching anthropology and religion at  The Lawrenceville School (NJ). Azoy lives with his wife, Professor Ana Maria Tuset Bertan, in rural Catalonia and the Mexican state of Sonora.

Larry Goodson

Larry Goodson has been Professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College in Calisle, PA, since 2002. He conducts a special program on Afghanistan at the War College and consults frequently on South Asia with senior military leaders.  Dr. Goodson was a Technical Advisor on Elections and a Monitor for the Emergency Loya Jirga in Afghanistan in 2002. In 2008-2009 he spent four months with the team that developed U.S. strategy in South Asia for the U.S. Central Command. He earned his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina. Goodson has traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan often, has lectured and consulted widely with  governments and non-governmental agencies, and has conducted more than 1,000 media interviews since September 11, 2001. He is the author of the bestselling Afghanistan’s Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban (2001). His book The Talibanization of Pakistan will soon be published by Palgrave MacMillan.

Athanasios Moulakis

Dr. Athanasios Moulakis joined the American University of Afghanistan as Chief Academic Officer at the beginning of 2008 after serving as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and as Onassis Foundation Fellow in Athens, Greece. Previously, he was director of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies of the University of Lugano. Over an 11-year period Dr. Moulakis was Herbst Professor of Humanities and Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado, where he was also founding Director of the Herbst Program of Humanities. Dr. Moulakis has held other academic and administrative assignments at European and North American colleges, institutes, and universities. A partial list includes the European University Institute in Florence, where he served as head of the Department of Political and Social Sciences; a Fulbright professorship at the University of Jena, Germany; the London School of Economics; St. John’s College, Annapolis; Harvard University; and the University of California, San Diego.

His publication list includes a large number of books and articles on topics in the humanities, political theory, public policy, higher education, international relations, and other scholarly fields. With a Dr.Phil. (magna cum laude) degree from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Dr. Moulakis has published and lectured in five languages. He has received numerous academic honors and awards, including the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ prize for best book on liberal education.

Ronald E. Neumann

Ronald E. Neumann now serves as President of the American Academy of Diplomacy in Washington, D.C., an institute formed by former Senior U.S. Foreign Service officers to strengthen the resources and skills of American diplomats.  Prior to his retirement in 2007 Neumann was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and three times U.S. Ambassador: to Algeria, to Bahrain, and from 2005 to 2007 to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.  He served in the Baghdad Embassy in 2004.   His other posts included Director of the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs and postings in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Iran, and Senegal as well as stateside positions with the Jordan Desk, the Middle East (NEA) Bureau, and the Office of Southern European Affairs. Ambassador Neumann has written a number of monographs and articles and a recently-issued book, The Other War: Winning and Losing in Afghanistan (2009).  He speaks French, Arabic, and some Dari.  Neumann served as a decorated infantry officer in Vietnam after earning his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of California at Riverside.

Paul R. Pillar

Dr. Paul R. Pillar serves as Georgetown University’s Director of Graduate Studies at the Center for Peace and Security Studies.  Professor Pillar retired in 2005 from a 28-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He has been Executive Assistant to CIA’s Deputy Director for Intelligence and Executive Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William Webster. He has also headed the Assessments and Information Group of the DCI Counterterrorist Center and, from 1997 to 1999, was deputy chief of the center. He was a Federal Executive Fellow at the Brookings Institution in 1999-2000. Professor Pillar is a retired officer in the U.S. Army Reserve and served on active duty in 1971-1973, including a tour of duty in Vietnam.  Dr. Pillar earned an A.B. degree from Dartmouth College, and received the B.Phil from Oxford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Teresita C. Schaffer

Teresita Schaffer is director of the South Asia Program at CSIS. Her areas of expertise include U.S.–South Asia relations, regional security, and economics, energy, and health policy in India. During her 30-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service, she specialized in international economics and South Asia, on which she was one of the State Department’s principal experts. From 1989 to 1992, she served as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia, at that time the senior South Asia position in the department; from 1992 to 1995, she was U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka; and from 1995 to 1997, she served as director of the Foreign Service Institute. Her earlier posts included Tel Aviv, Islamabad, New Delhi, and Dhaka, as well as a tour as director of the Office of International Trade in the State Department.

After retiring from the Foreign Service, Schaffer spent a year as a consultant on business issues relating to South Asia. She has also taught at Georgetown University and American University and authored publications on peace building in Sri Lanka, women’s studies in Bangladesh, and diplomacy in India, Kashmir, and Pakistan. Most recently, Schaffer authored India and the United States in the 21st Century: Reinventing Partnership (CSIS, 2009), which examined the strategic ties between the two countries and proposed new policies with global implications. She is currently writing a book on Pakistani negotiating styles that draws from her own experiences as a Foreign Service Officer, as well as from historical evidence. Schaffer speaks French, Swedish, German, Italian, Hebrew, Hindi, and Urdu, and has studied Bangla and Sinhala.

Samina Quraeshi

Samina Quraeshi is an award-winning designer, artist, author and educator dedicated to addressing the cultural emergency that faces our world today. Through her cultural, strategic and academic initiatives she promotes healing through understanding of our collective humanity while honoring and supporting our diverse traditions. She is currently the Robert Gardner Visiting Artist Fellow at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University and a principal of Shepard Quraeshi Associates, where she supervises graphic, environmental and architectural design for a diverse national and international clientele. She participates on many boards and committees, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, The Education for Family-Centered Community Development Initiative, and the Fulbright Scholars Program.

She served for six years as the Henry R. Luce Professor at the University of Miami after her appointment as the NY Times Resident in Design Arts at the American Academy in Rome in 1998, which followed four years as Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1993, Quraeshi was appointed the Assistant Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University. Ms. Quraeshi received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and MFA from Yale University School of Art. She is the recipient of numerous awards as well as honorary doctoral degrees from Bradford College and the Art Institute of Boston. She has taught graphic design and printmaking as a member of the faculties of the Rhode Island School of Design and the Boston University School of Visual Arts.

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2010 Photo Gallery

2010 Conference Booklist

Our 23rd Annual Camden Conference: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India – Crossroads of Conflict, will focus on shifting conflict patterns and implications for United States foreign policy in this region. At this stage, we recommend the following books to choose from. They are listed alphabetically by first mentioned author’s last name.

You may download a PDF file of the most up-to-date Booklist here.

Top Picks

Ali, Tariq. The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, Scribner, September 2008.

Publisher Comment: A veteran journalist on Pakistan, Ali reviews the country’s six-decade political history critically, indicting the leadership class and its ties to the U.S.

Allawi, Ali A. The Crisis of Islamic Civilization, Yale University Press, May 2009.

Publisher Comment: Allawi, former minister of defense and minister of finance in Iraq’s postwar governments, offers his version of the causes and consequences of the decline of Islamic civilization and proposals for its rejuvenation. He served as Minister of Defense and Minister of Finance in the Iraqi postwar governments. He is senior visiting fellow at Princeton University.

Azoy, G. Whitney.  Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan (2nd ed.) Waveland Press, 2002 (Paper).

“This new, updated edition appears after two decades, during which much, or most of it disastrous, has happened in Afghanistan. Two new chapters pay tribute to the author’s friend and field informant, and describe buzkashi as it has been played by new people in new places over the past 20 years.  In persisting through the terror and trials of Afghanistan’s recent history, perhaps buzkashi is also an apt metaphor for the tenacity of this long-suffering people.” From Foreign Service Journal, 12/02.

Amazon reader Hanif Yazid says it best: “Azoy describes a fascinating relationship between Afghanistan’s ‘national sport’ and its political evolution. Witty and genuine, his firsthand accounts of traditional Afghan notions of power, status and honor give the book a unique flavour.  Buzkashi is short, but informative. Easy to read and enjoy, it made me want to ride like the wind, dead goat in hand, to victory and glory!”

Highly recommended by several Conference Program Committee members.   Azoy is a confirmed speaker at our 2010 annual conference.

Bhutto, Benazir. Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West, Harper, April 2008, December 2008 (Paper)

From Booklist. Brad Hooper commentary:  Just days prior to her assassination, the late former prime minister of troubled Pakistan completed the manuscript of this book, which held great personal importance to her. Its importance extends beyond the writer’s own sense of purpose and accomplishment, however, because it is a vastly significant document for anyone seeking to understand the nature of past and contemporary Islam and its current interface with the West.

Afterword in paper edition by her husband and children: “There must be a reason that Allah gave our wife and mother the time to finish this book.”

Cole, Juan. Engaging the Muslim World, Palgrave Macmillan, March 2009.

Publisher Description:  Juan Cole disentangles the key foreign policy issues that America is grappling with today–from our dependence on Middle East petroleum to the promotion of Islamophobia by the American right–and delivers his informed advice on the best way forward. Cole’s unique ability to take the true Muslim perspective into account when looking at East-West relations make his insights well-rounded and prescient as he suggests a course of action on fundamental issues like religion, oil, war and peace. With substantive recommendations for the next administration on how to move forward in key countries such as Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, Engaging the Muslim World reveals how we can repair the damage of the foreign policy of the last eight years and forge ahead on a path of peace and prosperity.

Juan Cole, internationally respected historian, celebrated blogger, and Middle East expert, teaches history at the University of Michigan. He is a former speaker at the Camden Conference.

Coll, Steve. The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, Penguin, April 2008.

Publisher’s Description:  Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the national bestseller Ghost Wars, Steve Coll presents the story of the Bin Laden family’s rise to power and privilege, revealing new information to show how American influences changed the family and how one member’s rebellion changed America.

Jones, Seth. In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan, Norton, July 2009.

Publishers Weekly: Since 2001, RAND Corporation political scientist Jones has been observing the reinvigorated insurgency in Afghanistan and weighing the potency of its threat to the country’s future and American interests in the region. Jones finds the roots of the re-emergence in the expected areas: the deterioration of security after the ousting of the Taliban regime in 2002, the U.S.’s focus on Iraq as its foreign policy priority and Pakistan’s role as a haven for insurgents. He revisits Afghan history, specifically the invasions by the British in the mid- and late-19th century and the Russians in the late-20th to rue how little the U.S. has learned from these two previous wars. He sheds light on why Pakistan – a consistent supporter of the Taliban – continues to be a key player in the region’s future. Jones makes important arguments for the inclusion of local leaders, particularly in rural regions, but his diligent panorama of the situation fails to consider whether the war in Afghanistan is already lost. (July) Copyright © 1997-2005 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

Khalidi, Rashid. Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East. Beacon, March 2009.

Publisher Description: During the 45 years of the Cold War, policymakers from the United States and the Soviet Union vied for primacy in the Middle East. Their motives, long held to have had an ideological thrust, were, in fact, to gain control over access to oil and claim geographic and strategic advantage. These interventions deeply affected and exacerbated regional and civil wars throughout the Middle East, and the carefully calculated maneuvers fueled by the fierce competition between the United States and the USSR actually provoked breakdowns in fragile democracies.

Kilcullen, David. The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Oxford University Press, 2009.

Publishers Weekly, Starred Review:  Kilcullen, adviser on counterinsurgency to General Petraeus, defines accidental guerrillas as locals fighting primarily because outsiders (often Westerners) are intruding into their physical and cultural space, but they may also be galvanized by high-tech, internationally oriented ideologues. This interaction of two kinds of nonstate opponents renders both traditional counterterrorism and counterinsurgency inadequate. Kilcullen uses Afghanistan and Iraq as primary case studies for a new kind of war that relies on an ability to provoke Western powers into protracted, exhausting, expensive interventions.

Levy, Adrian & Scott-Clark, Catherine. Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons. Walker 2007.

Here is the shocking, three-decade story of A. Q. Khan and Pakistan’s nuclear program, and the complicity of the United States in the spread of nuclear weaponry.

In December, 1975, A. Q. Khan—a young Pakistani scientist working in Holland—stole top-secret blueprints for a revolutionary new process to arm a nuclear bomb. His original intention, and that of his government, was purely patriotic—to provide Pakistan a counter to India’s recently unveiled nuclear device. However, as Levy and Scott-Clark relate in their investigation of Khan’s career over the past thirty years, over time that limited ambition mushroomed into the world’s largest clandestine network engaged in selling nuclear secrets—a mercenary and illicit program managed by the Pakistani military and made possible, in large part, by aid money from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Libya, and by indiscriminate assistance from China.

The authors reveal that the sales of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya, so much in the news today, were made with the clear knowledge of the American government, for whom Pakistan has been a crucial buffer state and ally—first against the Soviet Union, now in the “war against terror.” Every successive American presidency, from Carter to George W. Bush, has turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear activity—rewriting and destroying evidence provided by its intelligence agencies, lying to Congress and the American people about Pakistan’s intentions and capability, and facilitating, through shortsightedness and intent, the spread of the very weapons we vilify the “axis of evil” powers for having and fear terrorists will obtain. Deception puts our current standoffs with Iran and North Korea in a startling new perspective, and makes clear two things: that Pakistan, far from being an ally, is a rogue nation at the epicenter of world destabilization; and that the complicity of the United States has ushered in a new nuclear winter.

Loyn, David. In Afghanistan: Two Hundred Years of British, Russian and American Occupation, Palgrave Macmillan, July 2009.

Publisher Description: Afghanistan has been a strategic prize for foreign empires for more than 200 years. The British, Russians, and Americans have all fought across its beautiful and inhospitable terrain, in conflicts variously ruthless, misguided and bloody. This violent history is a history littered with misunderstandings and broken promises, in which the British, the Russians, and later the Americans, constantly underestimated the ability of the Afghans.

In Afghanistan brings to life the personalities involved in Afghanistan’s relationship with the world, chronicling the misunderstandings and missed opportunities that have so often led to war. With 30 years experience as a BBC foreign correspondent, Loyn has had a front-row seat during Afghanistan’s recent history. In Afghanistan draws on his knowledge of the Taliban and the forces that prevail in Afghanistan, to provide an analysis of the lessons these conflicts have for the present day.

Luce, Edward. In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, Doubleday, January 2008.

Publishers Weekly. Luce illuminates the drastically lopsided features of a nuclear power still burdened by mass poverty and illiteracy, which he links in part to government control of the economy, an overwhelmingly rural landscape, and deep-seated institutional corruption. While describing religion’s complex role in Indian society, Luce emphasizes an extremely heterogeneous country with a growing consumerist culture, a geographically uneven labor force and an enduring caste system. This lively account includes a sharp assessment of U.S. promotion of India as a countervailing force to China in a three-power “triangular dance,” and generally sets a high standard for breadth, clarity and discernment in wrestling with the global implications of New India.

Luce currently is the Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times. He was the paper’s South Asia bureau chief, based in New Delhi, between 2001 and 2006.

Peters, Gretchen. Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda. Thomas Dunne, May 2009.

From Publishers Weekly. Peters draws on 10 years of reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan for this important examination of the nexus of [drug] smugglers and extremists in the global war against terrorists. Citing firsthand testimony, classified intelligence reports and specialized studies, Peters builds a solid case for her contention that the union of narco-traffickers, terrorist groups, and the international criminal underworld is the new axis of evil. Ground zero is Afghanistan, where the rejuvenated Taliban depend on opium for 70% of its funds and there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the drug trade. Peters argues that the failure to halt this money flow to terrorist networks is the single greatest failure in the war on terror, and warns that stanching the flood of drug money into terrorist coffers is essential.

Pillar, Paul R. Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, Brookings Institution. January, 2004.

This revised edition includes a new introductory essay on counterterrorism since 9/11. Publisher: In this critical study, a career CIA officer provides a guide to constructing and executing counterterrorist policy, urging that it be formulated as an integral part of broader U.S. foreign policy.

Amazon Reader David Fallas adds: “This is not a book about secret operations or police actions against terrorism. This text is about the phenomenom of terrorism, its different manifestations and the kinds of groups related to this activities. Mr. Pillar explains the methods for answering the terrorist threat and – contrary to what many may think – he relegates military actions to the last place of the list. The first edition of this book was written before September 11, 2001, but certainly it helps explain why the attacks took place and sets the path to prevent such acts in the future.”

Rashid, Ahmed.  Decent into Chaos: The United States and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, Penguin, 2009 (Paperback Edition).

Publishers Weekly: Starred Review:   “Long overshadowed by the Iraq War, the ongoing turmoil in Afghanistan and Central Asia finally receives a searching retrospective as Rashid (Taliban) surveys the region to reveal a thicket of ominous threats and lost opportunities—in Pakistan, a rickety dictatorship colludes with militants, and Afghanistan’s weak government is besieged by warlords, an exploding drug economy and a powerful Taliban insurgency. The author blames the unwillingness of American policymakers to shoulder the burden of nation building. According to Rashid, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and subsequently refused to commit the forces and money needed to rebuild it; instead the U.S. government made corrupt alliances with warlords to impose a superficial calm, while continuing to ignore the Pakistani government’s support of the Taliban and the other Islamic extremists who have virtually taken over Pakistan’s western provinces. With his unparalleled access to sources—I constantly berated [Afghan President] Karzai for his failure to understand the usefulness of political parties—Rashid is an authoritative guide to the region’s politics and his is an insightful, at times explosive, indictment of the U.S. government’s hand in the region’s degeneration.”

Rashid is a Pakistani journalist, based in Lahore, who has also authored Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (2002) and Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (2000). He also writes for a number of international newspapers.

Riedel, Bruce. The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future, Brookings, 2008.

Publishers Weekly:  Riedel, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and senior adviser on the Middle East to three past presidents, reviews how al-Qaeda has flourished since the September 11 attacks with ‘franchises’ mushrooming around the world. The author surveys al-Qaeda’s origins, workings and key members and introduces fresh information about the organization’s ideology and future plans. Riedel warns against conflating the war against al-Qaeda with the current war in Iraq (the president chose to declare war not on al Qaeda, but on ‘terrorism, a concept that he and Vice President Dick Cheney arrived at by confusing 9/11 with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq) and demonstrates how U.S. actions compound the public’s ignorance and vulnerability.

He argues that concentrating forces in Iraq has diverted attention and presence from Afghanistan and Pakistan, the hotbeds of jihadist organization, and suggests redirecting the military back to the badlands of the Afghan-Pakistan border while offering economic aid to forestall the extremism that thrives in destitute areas. Riedel’s argument in favor of greater U.S. involvement in the Arab-Israeli peace process is persuasive, and his prescriptions are well-evidenced, unfailingly sound and refreshingly sensible.

Schaffer, Teresita C. India and the United States in the 21st Century: Reinventing Partnership. Center for Strategic & International Studies, June  2009 (Paper)

Publisher  Description: Schaffer examines the astonishing new strategic partnership between the United States and India. Unlike other books on the subject, it brings together the two countries’ success in forging bilateral relations and their relatively skimpy record of seeking common ground on global and regional issues.

Our two governments have a vigorous military-to-military relationship, reflecting similar security interests. They have devoted much less attention to creating a common vision of the world, and they regularly spar in multilateral settings. The big global issues in the coming decade, however, including climate change, nuclear proliferation, and international financial reform, cannot be addressed without India.

Talbott, Strobe. Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb. Brookings, August 2004.

Publisher Description:  On May 11, 1998, three nuclear devices exploded under the Thar, or Great Indian Desert, shaking the surrounding villages—and the rest of the world. The immediate effect was to plunge US-India relations, already vexed by decades of tension and estrangement, into a new and acrimonious standoff. The situation deteriorated further when Pakistan responded with a test of its own two weeks later.

Engaging India is the revealing, authoritative account of the intensive talks that the United States conducted on parallel tracks with the South Asian nuclear powers over the next two and a half years. Bill Clinton’s point man for that high-stakes diplomacy takes us behind the scenes of one of the most intriguing and consequential political dramas of our time, reconstructing what happened—and why—with narrative verve, rich human detail, and penetrating analysis.

Strobe Talbott is president of the Brookings Institution. He served as deputy secretary of state from 1994 to 2001.

Von Hippel, Karin & Barton. Afghanistan and Pakistan on the Brink, CSIS, January 2009.

Dramatic changes are needed in order to succeed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Almost daily, the people of the region experience deteriorating security and a worsening economic situation.  At the same time, Afghans and Pakistanis will both be making tough political choices in the coming months, and the United States and major allies are in the midst of multiple policy reviews.  The appointment of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke should provide the opportunity to transform the current approach into one that has clear goals and a compelling narrative.

Afghanistan and Pakistan on the Brink is the result of a 200 person conference, held on November 21, 2008 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and co-organized by the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the National Defense University (NDU).  The event included participants from all parts of the U.S. government.

Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower : Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Knopf, 2006.

Publishers Weekly. Starred Review:   Wright, a New Yorker writer, brings exhaustive research and delightful prose to one of the best books yet on the history of terrorism. He begins with the observation that, despite an impressive record of terror and assassination, post–WWar II, Islamic militants failed to establish theocracies in any Arab country. Many helped Afghanistan resist the Russian invasion of 1979 before their unemployed warriors stepped up efforts at home. Al-Qaeda, formed in Afghanistan in 1988 and led by Osama bin Laden, pursued a different agenda, blaming America for Islam’s problems. Less wealthy than believed, bin Laden’s talents lay in organization and PR, Wright asserts. Ten years later, bin Laden blew up U.S. embassies in Africa and the destroyer Cole, opening the floodgates of money and recruits. Wright’s step-by-step description of these attacks reveals that planning terror is a sloppy business, leaving a trail of clues that, in the case of 9/11, raised many suspicions among individuals in the FBI, CIA and NSA. Wright shows that 9/11 could have been prevented if those agencies had worked together.

Zaeff, Abdul Salam. My Life with the Taliban. Translated and edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn. Columbia University Press, 2010.

Publisher Description: My Life with the Taliban is the autobiography of Abdul Salam Zaeef, a former senior member of Afghanistan’s Taliban and a principal actor in its domestic and foreign affairs. Translated for the first time from the Pashto, Zaeef’s words share more than a personal history of an unusual life. They supply a counternarrative to standard accounts of Afghanistan since 1979.

Zaeef shares his experiences as a poor youth in rural Kandahar. Both his parents died when he was young, and Russia’s invasion in 1979 forced Zaeef to flee to Pakistan. In 1983, Zaeef joined the jihad against the Soviets, fighting alongside several major figures of the anti-Soviet resistance, including current Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. After the war, he returned to his quiet life in Helmand, but factional conflicts soon broke out, and Zaeef, disgusted by the ensuing lawlessness, joined with other former mujahidin to form the Taliban, which assumed power in 1994.

Zaeef recounts his time with the organization. He served as ambassador to Pakistan at the time of 9/11, and his testimony sheds light on the “phoney war” that preceeded the U.S.-led intervention. In 2002, Zaeef was delivered to the American forces operating in Pakistan and spent four and a half years in prison, including several years in Guantanamo, before being released without trial or charge. He also provides an illuminating perspective on life in Guantanamo.

Human Interest and Other Stories

Crile, George. Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History. (Paper, Grove/Atlantic, 2007). Also on DVD.

Publisher  Comment: From an award-winning 60 Minutes reporter comes the extraordinary story of the largest and most successful CIA operation in history—the arming of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

Fraser, George MacDonald. Flashman: A Novel. Plume, 1984.

Jim Algrant recommendation; Jim Matlack recommendation and commentary:

I have just finished reading Flashman, the splendid novel about a character for a whole series of subsequent books. Harry Flashman is a total scoundrel, bounder, and coward who manages to be present at various battles and historic episodes and to win fame and promotion through luck and lying about his exploits.  Based on the school bully in Tom  Brown’s School Days.

Fraser has great fun with his character who narrates all the books as if given in autobiographical reminiscence.  They are, however, quite accurate as to history and manners and killingly funny.  The first book, Flashman, finds our hero sent to Imperial India in the 1840′s for his misconduct at home while in the army.  The greater part of the narrative follows Harry into Afghanistan in 1839 as the British troops take over in Kabul in the First Afghan War.  As you will perhaps know,  their brutal and short-sighted conduct  creates a total uprising against them by 1842, compelling a withdrawal under constant harassment during which an initial column of 15,000 soldiers, family  members, and camp followers is completely wiped out in the mountain passes. One wounded military doctor limped into Jalalabad as the sole survivor of the evacuation column.  It was one of the worst defeats ever endured by the British military.  Needless to add, Harry Flashman does survive through a series of implausible but exciting adventures.

Hosseini, Khalad.  A Thousand Splendid Suns, Riverhead, May 2007, November 2008 (Paper).

Publishers Weekly. Starred review:  Afghan-American novelist Hosseini follows up his bestselling The Kite Runner with another searing epic of Afghanistan in turmoil. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child. Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation. Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam and Laila become allies in an asymmetrical battle with Rasheed, whose violent misogyny—”There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten”—is endorsed by custom and law. Hosseini gives a forceful but nuanced portrait of a patriarchal despotism where women are agonizingly dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their sole path to social status. His tale is a powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan, but also a lyrical evocation of the lives and enduring hopes of its resilient characters.

The Kite Runner (2003) is also highly recommended.

Mortenson, Greg. Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Viking, December 2009

In this first-person narrative, Greg Mortenson picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, recounting his relentless, ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He also worked tirelessly in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan after a massive earthquake hit the region in 2005. In unique ways he has built relationships with Islamic clerics, militia commanders, and tribal leaders even as he was dodging shootouts with feuding Afghan warlords and surviving an eight-day armed abduction by the Taliban.

He shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education and literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, and women-all woven together with the many rich personal stories of the people who have been involved in this remarkable two-decade humanitarian effort.

Mike Mullen, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, adds: ” What Greg understands better than most—and what he practices more than anyone else I know—is the simple truth that all of us are better off when all of us have the opportunity to learn, especially our children. By helping them learn and grow, he’s shaping the very future of a region and giving hope to an entire generation.”

Mortenson, Greg and David Oliver Relin, David Oliver. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time, Penguin 2007

Publishers Weekly. Starred review:  Some failures lead to phenomenal successes, and this American [mountaineer’s] unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, the world’s second tallest mountain, is one of them. Dangerously ill when he finished his climb in 1993, Mortenson was sheltered for seven weeks by the small Pakistani village of Korphe; in return, he promised to build the impoverished town’s first school, a project that grew into the Central Asia Institute, which has since constructed more than 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Coauthor Relin recounts Mortenson’s efforts in fascinating detail, presenting compelling portraits of the village elders, con artists, philanthropists, mujahidin, Taliban officials, ambitious school girls and upright Muslims Mortenson met along the way.

As the book moves into the post-9/11 world, Mortenson and Relin argue that the United States must fight Islamic extremism in the region through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education, especially for girls. Captivating and suspenseful, with engrossing accounts of both hostilities and unlikely friendships, this book will win many readers’ hearts.

Samina Quraeshi.  Sacred Spaces: A Journey with the Sufis of the Indus. [2010 Camden Conference speaker.] Peabody Press, 2/10. May be distributed by Harvard University Press.

Sufism, the mystical path of Islam, is a key feature of the complex Islamic culture of South Asia today. Influenced by philosophies and traditions from other Muslim lands and by pre-Islamic rites and practices, Sufism offers a corrective to the image of Islam as monolithic and uniform.

Pakistani artist and educator Samina Quraeshi provides a locally inflected vision of Islam in South Asia that is enriched by art and by a female perspective on the diversity of Islamic expressions of faith. A unique account of a journey through the author’s childhood homeland in search of the wisdom of the Sufis, the book reveals the deeply spiritual nature of major centers of Sufism in the central and northwestern heartlands of South Asia.

Quraeshi relies on memory, storytelling, and image making to create an imaginative personal history using a rich body of photographs and works of art to reflect the seeking heart of the Sufi way and to demonstrate the diversity of this global religion. Her vision builds on the centuries-old Sufi tradition of mystical messages of love, freedom, and tolerance that continue to offer the promise of building cultural and spiritual bridges between peoples of different faiths.  From publisher.

Nicholas Schmidle. To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan, Holt, May 2009.

Publishers Weekly. Journalist Schmidle offers a gripping, grim account of his two years as a journalism fellow in Pakistan, where his travels took him into the most isolated and unfriendly provinces, and into the thick of interests and beliefs that impede that nation’s peace and progress. The author reports on the murky relationship between the Pakistani intelligence agencies and the Taliban and how American bombings have actually helped the Taliban gain influence in the border regions. While Schmidle amplifies the danger an unstable Pakistan poses to its neighbors and the world, he also turns a constructively critical eye back to American support of mujahideen during the Afghan war against the Soviets and shows how American intervention was both a help and an exacerbation of problems between Pakistan and Afghanistan. As a witness to Musharraf’s last days in power and the rage that followed Bhutto’s assassination, Schmidle has, with this effort, established himself as a fresh, eloquent and informed contributor to the ongoing dialogue regarding Pakistan, terrorism and the strategic importance of engaging Central Asia in efforts toward peace and stability.

Seierstad, Asne, The Bookseller of Kabul. Back Bay Books, October 2004.

Publisher Comment: After living for three months with the Kabul bookseller Sultan Khan in the spring of 2002, Norwegian journalist Seierstad penned this astounding portrait of a nation recovering from war, undergoing political flux and mired in misogyny and poverty. As a Westerner, she has the privilege of traveling between the worlds of men and women, and though the book is ostensibly a portrait of Khan, its real strength is the intimacy and brutal honesty with which it portrays the lives of Afghani living under fundamentalist Islam.

Stanton, Doug. Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan, Scribner, May 2009.

Publisher Comment: From the author of In Harm’s Way comes a true-life story of American soldiers overcoming great odds to achieve a stunning military victory. Horse Soldiers is the dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following 9/11 and rode to war on horses against the Taliban.

Stewart, Rory. The Places In Between. Harvest, June 2005 (Paper).

Publisher Description: In January 2002 Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan-surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. By day he passed through mountains covered in nine feet of snow, hamlets burned and emptied by the Taliban, and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers’ floors, shared their meals, and listened to their stories of the recent and ancient past. Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers. He was also adopted by an unexpected companion – a retired fighting mastiff he named Babur in honor of Afghanistan’s first Mughal emperor, in whose footsteps the pair was following.

Through these encounters-by turns touching, confounding, surprising, and funny – Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map’s countless places in between.

Scotsman Stewart is the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights and Director of the Carr Center on Human Rights Policy at Harvard.

The Troubling Middle East Setting

Gardiner, David. Last Chance: The Middle East in the Balance. I. B. Tauris, July 2009.

Publisher comment: As Barack Obama seeks to chart a new course in American foreign policy, David Gardner addresses the controversial but urgent question: why is the Middle East so dysfunctional? And what can be done about it? Gareth Evans, President, International Crisis Group, and former Foreign Minister of Australia, adds: “The basic message is clear and compelling. Stop propping up Arab autocrats, don’t reject democratic election outcomes the West doesn’t like, and don’t retreat into any other form of ‘shallow realism’: just let Arabs decide their own future in whatever form they wish. Few observers of the region are more knowledgeable or experienced than David Gardner, associate editor, Financial Times, as he provides an overdue wake-up call for policymakers.”

Peter Maass. Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil, Knopf, September 2009.

Publisher Description. A stunning and revealing examination of oil’s indelible impact on the countries that produce it and the people who possess it. Every unhappy oil-producing nation is unhappy in its own way, but all are touched by the “resource curse”—the power of oil to exacerbate existing problems and create new ones. Maass presents a vivid portrait of the troubled world oil has created. He takes us to Saudi Arabia, where officials deflect inquiries about the amount of petroleum remaining in the country’s largest reservoir; to Equatorial Guinea, where two tennis courts grace an oil-rich dictator’s estate but bandages and aspirin are a hospital’s only supplies; and to Venezuela, where Hugo Chávez’s campaign to redistribute oil wealth creates new economic and political crises. Maass, a New York Times Magazine writer, also introduces us to Iraqi oilmen trying to rebuild their industry after the invasion of 2003. Rebels, royalty, middlemen, environmentalists, indigenous activists, CEOs—their stories, deftly and sensitively presented, tell the larger story of oil in our time.

Vali Nasr. Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World, Free Press, September 2009.

Publishers Weekly. Nasr offers a fresh look at the future of religious extremism in the Middle East, suggesting that the great battle… for the soul of the region will be fought not over religion, but over business and capitalism. He posits that a rising middle class—seen most dramatically in Dubai, but a force across the whole Muslim world—is far more interested in economic success than in fervent religiosity, even as many bring a distinctly Muslim approach to the business they do. He points out that while the Reformation created the modern world, it wasn’t that era’s intolerant faith that made the transformation but rather trade and commerce, adding that values gain currency when they serve the economic and social interests of people. His in-depth analysis of the failures of various governments to provide for their people, as well as special focus on what is working in Turkey, and what is crippling Pakistan, helps drive his thesis home.

Historical, Cultural, Etc. Background

Weatherford, Jack. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Three Rivers Press, March 2005.

In the early 13^th century, the Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans did in four hundred. The Mongol Empire extended from the Pacific to the Mediterranean and from northern Siberia to Southeast Asia. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege. From the story of his rise through the tribal culture to the explosion of civilization that the Mongol Empire unleashed, this brilliant work of revisionist history is nothing less than the epic story of how the modern world was made.

As the Program Committee selects specific issues, speakers, and relevant books for the 2010 program, we will recommend additional reading material. As this unfolds, our booklist editor will also welcome your suggestions at smdb@samfelton.com

CC2010Booklist10FEB

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2010 Energy Symposium

The 6th Annual Camden Conference Energy Symposium took place on Saturday, January 30, 2010, at the University of Maine’s Hutchinson Center, Belfast.

6th Annual Energy Symposium

Fueling the Conflict: Energy Issues in Central Asia Thanks to all who attended this informative event!

Symposium speakers included:

• Hans Stege, PFC Energy. Caspian Crossroads-PFC
• Stephanie Cooke, Editor of Uranium Intelligence Weekly.  Nuclear Energy in South Asia – Recipe for Hope or Disaster
• David Renne, National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado.
• Betty Wilson, Department of Earth Sciences and Policy Fellow, Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, University of Maine, Orono
• With Moderator, Sarah Miller, editor of World Gas Intelligence and editor-at-large for the specialty newsletter group Energy Intelligence.

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2010 Conference Articles

The articles below provide information and background on the subject of the 2010 Camden Conference.

Conference eyes conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan

By Fred Hill for Bangor Daily News December 4, 2009

A common criticism of American foreign policy is that the American public itself is not well informed about the world.

Foreign policy guru Zbigniew Brzezinski recently commented in Foreign Affairs that presidents face three systemic weaknesses that undermine a decisive, long-term policy: The disproportionate role of ethnic lobbies, lack of bipartisanship and “one of the least informed publics” in the world.

“How can a public unfamiliar with geography or foreign history,” he wrote, “have even an elementary grasp of, say, the geopolitical dilemmas in Afghanistan and Pakistan?”

Thanks to the Camden Conference, which recently held its 23rd annual gathering, on Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, the people of Maine are well out in front of the curve.

Visit web page of full article »

Take the War to Pakistan

By Seth G. Jones for The New York Times December 4, 2009

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN. President Obama’s decision on a timetable for withdrawal of American troops only makes official what everyone here has known for a while: the clock is ticking in Afghanistan. The Taliban have long recognized this, and many captured militants have reminded their interrogators that “you have the watches, but we have the time.”

As we quicken the pace, the top American commander here, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has repeatedly noted that there are many issues to focus on: building more competent Afghan Army and police forces, adopting more effective anticorruption measures and reintegrating “moderate” Taliban and other insurgent fighters into Afghan society and politics.

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A bridge to build between India and Pakistan

By Ahmed Rashid for The Washington Post, November 24, 2009

LAHORE, PAKISTAN. Visits from three senior U.S. officials in three weeks indicate troubles in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship as tensions rise in South Asia. Pakistan is critical to any Afghan strategy the Obama administration undertakes, and the friction appears to be contributing to the long delay in announcement of a new U.S. strategy. Pakistanis hope that President Obama will push his first state guest, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to be more flexible toward Islamabad. But Pakistanis also must realize that its army cannot differentiate between good and bad terrorists.

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Don’t neglect India

By Fareed Zakaria for The Washington Post, November 23, 2009
Barack Obama has been criticized for kowtowing to the Chinese and the Russians over the past few months. So far this is all about atmospherics. The administration has not made any unilateral concession of substance to either country. It is taking a strategic view that developing strong relationships with both countries, particularly China, will yield long-term benefits. Strangely, however, that focus has been lost in dealing with Asia’s other rising giant, India.

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Repositioning military, civil affairs forces could help

By Fred Hill for The Bangor Daily News, November 19, 2009

Dividing Iraq into three separate entities, if not nations, emerged as an appealing option at the worst point of civil war in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. The split-up would have left effectively independent regions based on ethnic identities – the already largely autonomous Kurdish north, a Shiite-dominated south and a large, but oil-poor Sunni enclave – with a thin layer of national authority in Baghdad.

Even Joseph Biden, now vice president, was an advocate at the time.

Thankfully, the Bush administration rejected that alternative. For all its crazy-quilt 1920 borders, Iraq had developed a national identity over the years and its oil resources could not be easily carved up.

Today, as President Barack Obama nears a crucial decision on strategy to deal with the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan, some shift in the extent of lands under central government control might serve as a temporary framework to turn the tide.

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Defending the Arsenal: In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?

By Seymour M. Hersh for The New Yorker, November 16, 2009

“In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.”

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Pull the plug on the Afghan surge

By Charles Kupchan and Steven Simon for The Financial Times, November 3, 2009

“Although the aborted electoral run-off in Afghanistan has further weakened the country’s already troubled government, the Obama administration has little choice but to work with President Hamid Karzai. Indeed, the electoral mess paradoxically makes it easier for President Obama to decide on America’s next steps in the war. The turmoil in Kabul should convince the White House that General Stanley McChrystal’s plan to pursue counterinsurgency in the countryside is a bridge too far.

The US commander in Afghanistan would have coalition forces adopt a “population-centric” strategy in which they address “the needs and grievances of the people in their local environment”. In Iraq, a similar strategy did succeed in undercutting the Sunni insurgency. But Iraq’s central government was in the midst of stabilising and increasing its effectiveness, enabling it to rebuild the institutional infrastructure of a functioning state. With an Afghan government of questionable legitimacy and limited efficacy in control of only 30 per cent of the country – and much of the rest under the sway of local warlords – surging thousands of fresh troops into lawless rural areas is a recipe for chasing after unattainable ends with insufficient means.”

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The west’s strategic options in Afghanistan

By Max Hastings for The Financial Times, October 28, 2009

“Wednesday’s explosion in Peshawar, which killed more than 90 people, was the latest in a series that highlights the destabilisation of Pakistan. Western public opinion has turned against the Afghan war, perhaps irrevocably. President Barack Obama is criticised for alleged dithering. Yet the White House is struggling to answer two related and very hard questions. Are western strategic interests in the region vital? And is success plausible, in pursuing them by military means?”

“The Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, whose books on the Taliban and regional crisis have gained an international audience, argues in the current National Interest that the US must stay the course. If it does not, he says, there is a serious prospect of “Talibanisation” of the entire region and the Taliban is inseparably entwined with al-Qaeda. Neighbouring Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan face pauperisation, and consequent Islamic insurgencies against their corrupt and incompetent rulers. Mr Rashid paints a bleak picture of Pakistan’s predicament, with the civilian government too weak to stand up to the army – still obsessed with India – and the economy in freefall. Mr Rashid suggests a danger of a “colonels’ coup”, which installs an Islamabad regime sympathetic to the Taliban.”

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Obama has few Afghan options

By Max Hastings for The Financial Times, September 22, 2009

“It is striking to behold the caution with which the White House has reacted to the leak of General Stanley McChrystal’s Afghan review to the Washington Post. Though the document has been with the president for several weeks, a spokesman says that no decision on a further troop commitment is imminent. It is easy to see why.”

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A Somber Warning on Afghanistan

By Alison Smale for The New York Times, September 13, 2009

Western powers now in Afghanistan run the risk of suffering the fate of the Soviet Union there if they cannot halt the growing insurgency and an Afghan perception that they are foreign invaders, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former U.S. national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter.

In a speech opening a weekend gathering of military and foreign policy experts, Mr. Brzezinski, who was national security adviser when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in late 1979, endorsed a British and German call, backed by France, for a new international conference on the country. He also set the tone for a weekend of somber assessments of the situation.

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In Afghanistan, Let’s Keep It Simple

By Ahmed Rashid for The Washington Post, September 6, 2009

For much of the 20th century before the Soviet invasion in 1979, Afghanistan was a peaceful country living in harmony with its neighbors.

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Factors for Calming Afghanistan’s ‘Perfect Storm’

By Fred Hill for The Bangor Daily News, July 16, 2009

The rugged terrain and tragic history of Afghanistan have generated a colorful range of analogies and aphorisms, many from the fateful “Great Game” played out between Britain and Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

There’s Lord Curzon’s memorable 1907 lecture on “the razor’s edge” to describe how the life and death of nations can stem from poorly marked borders — apt for how the Durand line divided tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There’s the gruesome image of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Young British Sol-dier,” “wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains.”

But the most fitting description of the volatile condition of Afghanistan 2009 is the recent remark of a British soldier that counterinsurgency efforts in southern Helmand province are like “mowing the lawn.”

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2010 Conference Links

The following are links to informational, allied, and sister sites of the Camden Conference. For supporter and partner links for the current year’s conference, please visit our supporters or partners pages.

Exploritas

The Camden Conference is pleased to announce that this year’s program is being offered as an Exploritas course. Exploritas (formerly Elderhostel, Inc.), is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing exceptional learning opportunities at a remarkable value.

Visit this link

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2010 Conference Press

Press coverage and press releases related to the 2010 Camden Conference.

Camden Conference In the News

Conference eyes conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan

By Fred Hill for Bangor Daily News December 4, 2009

A common criticism of American foreign policy is that the American public itself is not well informed about the world.

Foreign policy guru Zbigniew Brzezinski recently commented in Foreign Affairs that presidents face three systemic weaknesses that undermine a decisive, long-term policy: The disproportionate role of ethnic lobbies, lack of bipartisanship and “one of the least informed publics” in the world.

“How can a public unfamiliar with geography or foreign history,” he wrote, “have even an elementary grasp of, say, the geopolitical dilemmas in Afghanistan and Pakistan?”

Thanks to the Camden Conference, which recently held its 23rd annual gathering, on Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, the people of Maine are well out in front of the curve.

Visit web page of full article »

Camden Foreign Policy Conference looks to South Asia

Portland Press Herald March 4, 2010 By Ron Bancroft

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‘Mowing the Grass’ in Afghanistan

The Boston Globe February 28, 2010 By H.D.S. Greenway

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Mad Mullahs and Guys in Ties face off in a high-stakes game in Afghanistan

The Free Press February 26, 2010 By Christine Parrish

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Ambassador Burns describes strategic focus in South Asia

Village Soup, February 23, 2010 By Andrew Benore

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Foreign Policy Experts Discuss South Asia at Camden Conference

The Bangor Daily News February 21, 2010 By Kevin Miller

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Rashid introduces ‘grand betrayal’ into New Great Game

Village Soup, February 22, 2010 By Andrew Benore

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The Spy, The Scholar, and The Five Star General

The Free Press February 4, 2010 By Christine Parrish

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2010 Camden Conference Community Events Series Gets Underway This Week

Village Soup, August 21, 2009: Holman to discuss new challenges in Central Asia

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2010 Conference CamCasts

AHMED RASHID

“Pakistan, Afghanistan and U.S. Policy in the Region”

WHITNEY AZOY

“Is There an Afghanistan?”

SAMINA QURAESHI

“What Future for Pakistan?”

TERESITA SCHAFFER

“Afghanistan and Pakistan in Turmoil—The View from India”

PAUL PILLAR

“Assessing U.S. Policies and Prospects in South Asia”

LARRY GOODSON

“U.S. Military Strategy in Afghanistan”

RONALD NEUMANN

“U.S. Policies and Prospects in South Asia”

ATHANASIOS  MOULAKIS

“The  View  From  Kabul”

NICHOLAS BURNS

“Lessons for American Policy”

Concluding Panel Discussion

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2010 Conference Highlights

Highlights from the 2010 Camden Conference: Afghanistan Pakistan, India – Crossroads of Conflict

Download the 2010 Highlights PDF now »

• Ahmed Rashid
• G. Whitney Azoy
• Samina Quraeshi
• Teresita Schaffer
• Larry Goodson
• Paul Pillar
• Ronald Neumann
• Athanasios Moulakis
• Panel Discussion

Pakistan, Afghanistan, and US Policy in the Region

Only a negotiated settlement can end the Afghanistan war.

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid began his keynote address by pointing out that approximately a year ago, the US realized the war in Afghanistan could not be won militarily. It had to adopt a strategy that could enable it to leave short of victory. Therefore, it needed to initiate a dialogue with the Taliban to find a political compromise, but to do so successfully, it had to reverse the Taliban’s military momentum; hence, the Obama-announced surges in March and December. Meanwhile, the US must carry on the fight, as well as future negotiations, with a weak, unpopular President Karzai at its side—a leader further discredited by the rigged elections of last August. Additionally, Afghanistan has had no real national economy in the nine years since the overthrow of the Taliban. The good news is that recent polls show that, despite the lack of support for Karzai, only six percent of the Afghan population actively favors a Taliban government. The bad news is that so long as the Taliban retains its sanctuary in Pakistan, it is safe. Any hope for a negotiated settlement must involve an end to the Pakistan safe haven. Obama’s current strategy, the counterinsurgency doctrine initiated by General Stanley McChrystal, represents a dramatic change: investing in agriculture, rebuilding the infrastructure, pursuing the sanctuary issue, and dealing with the awareness that Pakistan’s conflict with India needs to move toward resolution. It’s an uphill battle. In recent years, the Taliban has developed enormously as a military force, implementing various tactics, such as the use of land mines and suicide bombers, learned from al Qaeda in Iraq. But even though they have developed a relatively sophisticated public relations and media approach—“an ability to get their message out”—they have not grown politically; they have no real social or economic agenda. And the Afghan population realizes this. With the new US military surge, and the implementation of the new counterinsurgency methods, “the Taliban strength is at its zenith.” While they can continue to launch attacks, they can’t take over major cities. Afghans believe that economic development is possible with western support, but not through the Taliban. But because of Obama’s fixed timeline for withdrawal, “a tactical error,” everyone in the region believes the US will be on its way out after June of 2011. So why would the Taliban be willing to talk? Some hardliners, of course, would not be. But Western firepower grows. “The Taliban are tired.” They are also fed up with being controlled and micromanaged by the Pakistani intelligence services. Because the Taliban movement is a nationalist, Pashtun-based struggle, talking with the Afghan government is a viable option for them. Already, there are some signs of some moderation within the Taliban, at least from statements that hint at a willingness to break with al Qaeda, and an emphasis on their Afghan nationalist credentials as opposed to any interest in interfering in other countries’ affairs. They have even suggested they would not be against women’s education. Pakistan, meanwhile, has made it clear that any dialogue between the Taliban and the Karzai government must involve Pakistan. Pakistan’s recent arrest of the number-two Afghan Taliban leader was a direct outcome of his negotiating with Karzai without including Pakistan. Pakistan has two major internal issues. The first is that, 60 years after the partition that created Pakistan, there is still no consensus on its national identity. Is Pakistan a purely Islamic state; or is it instead a democratic, national state for all its citizens? Secondly, a large gulf remains between what the army considers the country’s national security requirements and what civilian governments believe. The army gets a huge percentage of the national budget to fortify itself against the perceived threat from India. Indeed, it’s this perception that keeps the army in power, even while Pakistan is under nominal civilian rule. This gulf in defining national security is widening, resulting in an ongoing political stalemate: the army currently has the backing of the judiciary against Zardari’s government, but it doesn’t have a political party it can use to topple the government. The severe economic recession only makes matters worse. And there is a new and growing separatist insurgency in Baluchistan. The Pakistani Taliban itself, with its vision of an Islamic state, has grown sufficiently strong that the army, supported by the public, has finally moved to crack down on it. By contrast, the Afghan Taliban is still useful to the Pakistani army in terms of its overall conflict with India, because Karzai, as seen from Islamabad, is much too close to India. Meanwhile, the US has its own serious problems. Are we ready to encourage and support Karzai in negotiations with the senior leadership of the Taliban—not just the middle level and foot soldiers? In this regard, Rashid noted that “Karzai is ahead of the US.” In answer to a subsequent question, he emphasized that the war “can only end with a negotiated settlement.” But if we do pursue this route with the Afghans, how do we persuade the Pakistani military to get on board? In any case, a precipitate withdrawal by the US without a power-sharing arrangement would likely lead to a civil war. So how has Obama dealt with these complex, interlocking, and often contradictory difficulties during his first year in office? He has, as yet, been unable to cobble together a regional strategy that ties Iran into a solution. If Iran is not involved, it could act as a spoiler for any compromise in Afghanistan. India/Pakistan relations are worse. Pakistan will have to feel comfortable that, whatever the final compromise in Afghanistan, the Indians do not end up with more influence there.  The Taliban are stronger than ever—and of course this is the clear reason for the US military surge. The economic benefits that a counterinsurgency strategy could bring depend foremost on a successful outcome of the “clear and hold” part of the new approach. Karzai, meanwhile, remains locked in the old tribal system, in which good governance is not a top priority. In summing up, Rashid noted that one thing Afghanistan has demonstrated over the 30 years since the Soviet invasion has been an enormous “absorptive capacity.” For example, a number of both Islamists and communists serve in the current Parliament. So absorbing the Taliban into the mix should not be impossible. During this same period, however difficult the situation—first fighting the Soviets and then fighting one another—no one has been able to or has wanted to split the country apart. Going into the tricky and difficult times ahead, both of these factors are important strengths. During the question-and-answer period, Rashid pointed out that while the Taliban at the lower levels is highly decentralized, at the very top, under Mullah Omar, “it is a coherent group that can be talked to.”  In response to another question, he suggested that initially, the use of Predator drones in Pakistan had been unhelpful. But now, the US and Pakistan intelligence services are cooperating more fully, and as a result, the drones are now more effective. A questioner seeking additional understanding of the relationship between the US and Pakistan and the sanctuary issue was told that the Pakistani army strongly resents the special relationship the US has developed in recent years with India. India has had long-standing cultural ties with Afghanistan, long predating 9/11. The Pakistanis accuse the Indians of arming the Baluch insurgency, which, Rashid added, “is probably true.” On the other hand, Afghanistan is not a necessary conduit for such arms; they could be provided through the Gulf. Settlement of the Kashmir problem would be “the major key” to reassuring the Pakistani army about India’s intentions. Unfortunately, although a Kashmir resolution is Pakistan’s “top priority,” India has “no interest in pursuing it.” Answering a question about the stability of the current government in Islamabad, Rashid pointed out that the Pakistan Peoples Party, the party in power, is “the only nationalist party with support all over the country.” By contrast, Zardari’s principle opponent, Sharif, only has real support in the Punjab. Rashid added that regardless of who is in power in Pakistan, the military are fully in control of the nuclear arsenal. In answering a question about Obama and the region, Rashid said that a key problem with Obama’s foreign policy, from the point of view of the Muslim world, is the “lack of follow-through.” For example, the Cairo speech last spring was very well received, but nothing developed from it. In response to the last question, concerning the possibility of a radical Islamist takeover in Pakistan, Rashid reaffirmed that the Pakistani army has finally started to move against the Taliban there. They must now take on the rest of the extremist Islamist groups in Pakistan. The army is hoping for some kind of dialogue and ultimate breakthrough with India. But the problem is that “the terrorists control this relationship,” and “they want to derail the process; they want conflict.” Another Mumbai-type attack is a very real possibility. And while there is no immediate threat of a split within the Pakistan military, the danger of future fissions is very real. Rashid concluded by stressing that, in terms of dealing with al Qaeda and other extremists and preventing further descent into possible chaos, this year “is very critical.”

~ Ahmed Rashid, of Lahore, Pakistan, is a journalist, scholar, and best-selling author of several books on Central Asia. He is a correspondent to the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Daily Telegraph; and he writes for the Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and academic journals. He appears regularly on international TV and radio networks.

Reported by Mac Deford

Is There an Afghanistan?

Does Afghanistan have the political DNA of an enduring nation-state?

G. Whitney Azoy

“Is there really an Afghanistan?” Anthropologist Whitney Azoy quickly answered the question he raised in his title. “My fear is that 21st-century Afghanistan—no matter who controls it, or more aptly, claims to control it—lacks the DNA of sustainable nation-statehood.” Azoy explained this conclusion in part by asking, “Who is an Afghan?” He said that for most of us, the term means all inhabitants of what has come to be called Afghanistan. But the Uzbek farmers above the Kunduz River and the Hazaras of Yakawlang do not consider themselves Afghans. To them, Azoy says, “Afghan means Pashtun.” Acknowledging that there are those who believe that Afghanistan can survive, Azoy took this position: “The (anti-Soviet) jihad was won not because of patriotic unity but in spite of intense and bitter rivalries among ethnically based groupings of mujahedeen. Rhetoric to the contrary, they were fighting and dying less for their country than for their own lands and families and co-ethnics. And, of course, for Islam.” As for the absence of separatist movements, “no one ethnic region possessed the size and resources to exist on its own,” and none wanted to be annexed by its neighbors. “In short, there were no serious separatist movements because no serious options existed.” Instead, Azoy maintained, Afghanistan’s topography, its various ethnicities, its political origins, and its subsequent history put its future as a nation-state in question. • The topography of Afghanistan creates three distinct frontier regions—the eastern fringe of Persia, the northwestern fringe of India, and the southern fringe of Central Asia. The often impassible Hindu Kush mountain range, running northeast to southwest, divides the country down the middle. “Kabul and Kandahar face towards fertile India; Kunduz and Mazar toward the deserts of Central Asia. So there’s a North and a South, and they’re very different. There’s also a West, where the Hindu Kush dwindle into flat plains. The ancient city of Herat, located on those flatlands, faces westward toward Iran. • Ethnicity “is the name of the game in all spheres of local life,” Azoy contended. The Pashtuns are the largest group (viewed as 40 percent of the population by neutral sources and at least 60 percent by Pashtun sources). “When combined with their Pashtun brethren in northwestern Pakistan, they constitute the world’s second-largest ethnic nation without its own state—unless you’re an Afghan Pashtun and you believe, as many of them do, that all Afghanistan belongs to you.” Pashtuns have ruled Afghanistan—insofar as anyone has ever really ruled it—for all but two brief periods in its 263-year history. “Pashtun society remains well and truly tribal. Norwegian anthropologist Frederick Barth notes that Pashtunwali, the so-called Pashtun code, includes a refusal to submit oneself to any form of supertribal authority, in particular to government. Once involved with government, Barth says, a Pashtun’s cultural authenticity is called into question. Karzai was expected to deliver his Pashtun kinsmen. It hasn’t happened, and “Barth’s observation may explain why not,” according to Azoy. The other main ethnic groups include Tajiks (Persian-speaking, Indo-European); Hazaras (Persian-speaking, Mongol-descended); Uzbeks and Turkmens (Turkic-speaking from East-Central Asia); and a catch-all category of eastern mountaineers now called Nuristanis, whose languages change from valley to valley These various non-Pashtun groups differ among themselves, but they share a deep-seated if often hidden resentment of Pashtun hegemony. Azoy told the story of an experience he had in the north in the 1970s. “The governor, a Pashtun from Kandahar, took me into his confidence and showed me a map with several villages of the same name: Naaqel. This word has to do with transport and conveyance. The Naaqel villages, all on rich, river-bottom land, were peopled by Pashtuns who’d been moved north from their southern homeland by the Pashtun government in Kabul. Their mission: to convey Pashtunism, to make all Afghanistan Pashtun in fact as well as in name. The other ethnicities had to sit and take it and hate it…until the onset of chaos in 1978. Thereafter each of them—in various combinations and subdivisions—reasserted a measure of long-lost autonomy.” The Pashtun Taliban took this autonomy from them in the late 1990s, and they gained it back after 9/11. “They are not about to be bossed except by their ethnic bosses. These minorities are suspicious of government but not viscerally opposed to it. Note that our current troubles are not with non-Pashtuns, and not in the north, except in those areas peopled by Naaquel Pashtuns sympathetic to their Taliban kinsmen.” • Political history has played a major role in creating a doomed Afghanistan. During the time of The Great Game between the British and the Russians in the 19th century, a weak Afghanistan was useful. The Durand Line, drawn by London, separated Afghanistan from British India (now Pakistan) and divided the Pashtun people in half. In addition, Abdur Rahman, who ruled Afghanistan from1880 to1901, cut a deal with the British. The British provided subsidies in return for control over foreign affairs. The subsidies allowed Abdur Rahman to finance and achieve unprecedented internal control, but made Afghanistan into a dependent state—which it remains today, in many ways. “Who, long-term, will pay its bills?” • Events since 2001 have played a role in destabilizing Afghanistan, Azoy said lastly. “In my opinion, a pair of consequential mistakes was made at the Bonn Conference in December 2001. First it was decided, proudly and unrealistically, to make Afghanistan far more government-centralized than ever before. Secondly and stupidly, the preconflict monarchy was discarded. The old king, who had far deeper Pashtun support than Karzai, is dead. And Karzai, re-elected in a farce and faced with unprecedented levels of corruption, maintains a doomed centralist façade while negotiating with a Taliban movement that, I believe, has little reason to negotiate. ” Azoy concluded with this view of possible American actions. The strategy called “Recreate the State” has little likelihood of success. When we leave, the central government will leave shortly thereafter and the Taliban will return. Alternatively, the US can, as it has begun to do with the Shinwaris, settle for a “Bribe the Tribe” strategy. We deliver development resources directly to the tribal elders, and in return, they burn Taliban houses. This approach is not a short-term fix; it may need to go on for decades. However, “it would cost fewer American lives, probably fewer Afghan lives, and maybe even fewer US tax dollars than what we do now.” Azoy ended with this thought: “Bribe the Tribe, or course, would not be regarded as directly supporting the Afghan central government and thus the Afghan nation-state. Indeed, it would seem to undermine those modern-era institutions. But, at a minimum, let’s bite the bullet and ask ourselves whether, long-term, Afghanistan will survive anyway—whether it has the DNA of enduring nation-statehood. I have my doubts. I hope I’m wrong.”

Reported by Judy Stein

Q&A

Q: Was the American policy of building democracy fated to failure from the beginning?

Azoy: Not from the beginning. We should have aimed to return to the preconflict status of a mini-state, which sort of worked, reigned by a constitutional monarch. Enormous emphasis should have been put on security, and much less on economic development. Afghans don’t starve. Instead we developed a political roadmap that assembled a structure in which Afghans now have no faith at all.

Q: Given that 30 percent of the population has fled over the last 30 years, and another 20 percent has been killed or internally dislocated, is the tribal structure still really the controlling factor?

Azoy: The tribal structure, however debilitated, has deep roots. Memories are long and loyalties are long. It is still the most deeply rooted authority structure in the Pashtun south.

Q: Does the US fear that Afghanistan will be fragmented, or that it will be unified under the Taliban?

Azoy: In 2001 the Taliban was on the brink of controlling the whole country. Can they do it again? I think it is possible, but they’ll have a bigger tussle on their hands with non-Pashtuns in the north. If the Taliban had conquered the country in 2001, I don’t think we would have a Taliban government today. Governments don’t last long in Afghanistan. The real question is whether the Taliban will cut its ties with al Qaeda.

Q:Can you see good leadership reversing the fortunes of Afghanistan?

Azoy: The big issue is legitimacy. Who has the legitimacy to sell himself to the Afghan people as a leader? Without that legitimacy, you are not going to get leadership. The democratic process is largely discredited. If you can’t get legitimacy, forget it.

~ G. Whitney Azoy is a cultural anthropologist with 40 years of experience working in and with Afghanistan. He is the immediate past director of the American Institute of Afghan Studies in Kabul. He is the author of Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan.

What Future for Pakistan?

Embracing cultural diversity is an urgent project.

Samina Quraeshi

Acknowledging Pakistan’s current state of crisis, Samina Quraeshi asked Conference participants to join her in imagining “a much more optimistic future for Pakistan.” Such a future, she believes, will require “a Pakistan that is proud of its internal ethnic and linguistic diversity, its national role in a regional ecosystem, and its unique relationship to religion.” In order for this dream to become a reality and for Pakistan to flourish, its government and its citizens need to create a truly pluralist society. Pluralism means the active and collective creation of a shared and cohesive society out of its diverse ethic and spiritual elements. The government of Pakistan would like its citizens to think they are all the same, Quraeshi says, but they are not. The country is a mosaic of geographical regions, ethnicities, and languages, and Pakistanis need to embrace having multiple, “hyphenated” identities. Pakistani policy must support the development of civil-society institutions, engage with the hopes of its youth, and invest in preserving and advancing its varied forms of cultural expression. The first step is peaceful coexistence, which is currently under threat from widespread religious misinformation and illiteracy. The general public is surprisingly unaware of the diversity of religious expressions and beliefs that have evolved in differing social, geographic, and historical contexts. The news media sensationalize extremist violence so that violence characterizes images of Islam in the West. The voice of fundamentalist Islam comes to represent the entire Muslim world, and diverse ethnic identities are fused into the image of an al Qaeda suicide bomber. But the reductive instinct to turn someone’s faith into his or her identity is also a tool governments use to mask the absence of a popular mandate or the weakness of civil institutions. Successive Pakistani governments have found it politically expedient to collapse diverse ethnic and linguistic identities, political aspirations, and cultural practices into the image of a homogenous Pakistani nationalism, resolute in its Islam and its opposition to the nation-state of India, willfully ignorant of the existential threats that are splintering the state from within. These threats are various, and the security risks they represent reverberate throughout the world today. Quraeshi asked if these challenges can be turned into opportunity. Can we activate the heterogeneity of Pakistan’s cultures and cultural practices towards national stability and peace? She noted that celebrating cultural diversity has become a cliché, especially in the West. It is certainly no substitute for widespread literacy, health, the rule of law, and strong institutions that encourage peaceful political dissent. But in a context such as Pakistan, it is an urgent project. Quraeshi described herself as an artist who has spent 30 years travelling between her country and the US, using art to introduce complex cultural nuances into the popular understanding between these two worlds. To do so, she has relied on her belief that her identities as an artist, a woman, a mother, a Pakistani, a Muslim, and an American citizen are not in conflict. The overlap of these identities was not a matter of discovery; it was a matter of choice. She believes her own choice offers clues to how we might imagine a different future for Pakistan. The great Indian economist Amartya Sen argues in Identity and Violence that violence is fomented by the imposition of singular, belligerent identities on gullible people, championed by proficient artisans of terror. He advocates not suppressing identity but drawing it out, because competing identities can challenge the force of a single, bellicose identity. The importance of Islam to millions of Pakistanis should not and could not be diminished. But Quraeshi asserts that the plurality of Islamic practice within Pakistan can be made visible, and art and cultural self-knowledge are very powerful tools. Cultural diplomacy is badly needed at this point. For Pakistanis to know themselves and to understand and reverse the forces that seek to splinter the society apart, they must remember a time not long ago when the country was young and on a path to becoming a standard-bearer for representative democracy in Muslim-majority nations. Pakistan today is very different. In the last three decades, drastic social and cultural transformations have occurred. These changes have evolved along with the rise of poverty, lack of justice, and a lower and middle class that is being trained to believe that religion is the answer to all their ills. A widespread illiteracy about Islam and Pakistan fuels ignorance and fear, prejudice and antagonism, and hinders peaceful coexistence. The new story has to be about Islamic reformation, cross-cultural dialogue, modernization, and the nurture of democracy. Harnessing the power of art and culture is a means to this end. People need to take pride in their own stories. Society will change when people change their way of thinking. Exposure to both the historical context of Islamic cultural development, and to the diversity of ways in which Islam is practiced, is the best way to counter the redefinition of Islam by violent fundamentalists. Both the West and Pakistan need to know that Islam is not about violence and intolerance. Most importantly, Islam’s many paths need to be communicated to the younger generation through improved curricula and multimedia initiatives. We need to intervene in ways that will energize cultural production, nurture emerging voices, and educate communities here and abroad. Pakistan is a land where multiple affiliations— familial, tribal, regional, political, ethnic, linguistic, and religious— currently compete, often violently. It is a country of multiple and overlapping migrations. We need to allow these affiliations and cultural influences to coexist within the same individual and the same society. That’s the only way to build a road map to a pluralist society with institutions that provide for nonviolent political dissent and reform. On the road to realizing that dream, celebration of cultural diversity is a good place to start. Quraeshi cited the words of His Highness the Aga Khan: “Those who talk about an inevitable ’clash of civilizations’ can point today to an accumulating array of symptoms which sometimes seems to reflect their diagnosis. I believe, however, that this diagnosis is wrong—that its symptoms are more dramatic than they are representative—and that these symptoms are rooted in human ignorance rather than human character. The problem of ignorance is a problem that can be addressed. Perhaps it can even be ameliorated—but only if we go to work on our educational tasks with sustained energy, creativity, and intelligence.” Quraeshi concluded proudly, “Pakistan is creative. It has energy. It has intelligence. Pakistan Zendabad!” (“Long live Pakistan!”)

Reported by Joan Phaup

Q&A

Q: Can you think of a cultural-diplomacy effort that might unite the US and Pakistan through art, literature, or people-to-people exchanges?

Quraeshi: Cultural education is the way to replace the narrative of pernicious messages. It’s through the power of drama, music, film, and television. All of this culture is burgeoning in Pakistan, but it needs resources and technical support. We need a cultural exchange like we had in the time of the Kennedys, when we exchanged teachers and shared resources and technical knowledge.

Q: What is the Aga Khan’s role in all of this?

Quraeshi: The Aga Khan is a very important figure in cultural preservation. The Aga Khan Foundation works throughout the Muslim world on initiatives for the preservation of culture. For example, he funds the Sacred Music Festival in Morocco, which collects music from all across the Muslim world. These efforts represent the single largest, most cohesive effort to preserve Islamic culture and present it to the world at a level that creates understanding.

Q: Could you comment about civil-society initiatives in Pakistan?

Quraeshi: Pakistanis have created a subterranean current of civil society. There’s charity for people who are really disadvantaged, and there are forums such as the Women’s Action Forums. There are TV serials that carry a message, and a fledgling movie industry. It’s very important to realize that there are these movements all through Pakistan. These efforts have been repressed for so long. People have confused the act of piety with preservation of culture. They think it’s not being a good Muslim to appreciate the arts. Cultural diplomacy can play a role in changing that perception, so that it is possible to do both.

~ Samina Quraeshi is an award-winning artist, author, and educator, and she is a Visiting Artist and Fellow at Harvard University. Her design firm in Massachusetts serves a diverse international clientele. She is a specialist in the cultures of South Asia and the internal challenges in Pakistan.

Afghanistan and Pakistan in Turmoil —The View from India

India’s growing role as a world power.

Teresita Schaffer

While Pakistan remains fearfully fixated on its powerful neighbor to the east, India has moved on. New Delhi’s “most important external partner” is the US, and China has replaced Pakistan as its key “strategic rival—the country whose status on the international scene India wants to match.” US/India relations are characterized by hope, while US policies toward Afghanistan and Pakistan are forged more “out of fear of what could go wrong.” Yet, in presenting the view from India on the turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Teresita Schaffer stressed how unresolved issues with Pakistan continue to influence how the two great democracies pursue their “growing convergence of interests.” Looking back to the Cold War years, when Russia was India’s major ally, this 30-year US Foreign Service veteran explained how all this changed with the demise of the Soviet Union and India’s own turn to economic expansion as “a driver of their foreign policy.” Soon to become a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council and already a member of the Group of 20, India is on its way to having a position “as a member of the board of the world.” To put in context how India’s altered position in the world is affecting its view of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and US policy towards those countries, Schaffer directed the audience back to last November’s visit to Washington by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “Old subcontinent hands would have been astonished that the word Pakistan barely crossed his lips in public appearances,” she noted, while Afghanistan “rated a mention in every speech he gave.” Even more surprising, “Manmohan Singh’s basic message was, we want the US to stick around and to succeed.” Schaffer then turned to India’s current take on Pakistan: “For India, Pakistan represents a challenge to their whole idea of being a multicultural secular state. For Pakistan…India represents the eternal enemy and existential threat.” Kashmir was the one Muslim-majority area that did not become part of Pakistan when the British left, she noted, and an area that the two countries have fought two and a half wars over. “The real problem for Pakistan is that Kashmir…is unfinished business of partition,” while for India, “the problem is that this has led to a half-century of intermittent subversion, violence, and unresolved problems with what is now a nuclear-armed neighbor.” Pakistan has relied increasingly on “asymmetric warfare” to deal with the matter, Schaffer said, an example being “infiltration of insurgents from Pakistan into India, sometimes with the support of Pakistani official sources, sometimes on their own, and always a very ambiguous area.” An official dialogue begun by India and Pakistan in 2004 came to an abrupt end with the attack by such insurgents from Pakistan on the Taj Hotel and other places in Mumbai on Thanksgiving, 2008. “I want to stress how traumatic this has been on India.” Speculation is rife that another such incident would harden India’s position and lead it to adopt a “let them bleed” stance toward Pakistan. “I’m actually not so sure about that,” Schaffer said. But she conceded that the problem is not trivial, and it begs the question, “Does either India or Pakistan want to make peace? My answer is yes—but.” In the earlier dialogue, just before President Pervez Musharraf left office, Pakistan and India “came very close to agreeing to the basis for a settlement in Kashmir.” But neither side really sold the deal at home. As a result, “the political strength and salesmanship of the leaders in both those countries are the critical ingredients in having a real breakthrough.” Unfortunately, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is “by no means strong enough to push through a breakthrough with India,” while Manmohan Singh is “likely to behave cautiously” unless he has a sense that the Pakistani leader can successfully push through a settlement that “inevitably is going to be much closer to India’s idea of what it ought to be than to Pakistan’s.” Schaffer then turned to Afghanistan, with which India has had close relations for decades. A major Pakistan objective in Afghanistan is “to minimize India’s influence—down to zero if at all possible,” while India wants to make sure that “…Pakistan be the only game in town.” Against this background, India just after 9/11 “saw the US involvement in Afghanistan as a way to get rid of the Taliban, who was seen as a creature not just of Pakistan, but of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the instrument of Pakistan’s use of extremists as a foreign policy tool.” India is a heavy donor to and popular with the Afghans, something the US has welcomed. But India is “intensely frustrated” that Washington has not let it help on the security side, out of “deference to Pakistan.” Schaffer then related how the US has attempted to “de-hyphenate” its policy toward India and Pakistan and keep them on separate tracks. “Unfortunately, India and Pakistan have not de-hyphenated. They are both more than eager to figure out who is number one on the hit parade.” She added, “India has a major concern that… especially on terrorism issues, the US will once again pull back from the logical consequences of the Pakistani role,” whether in Afghanistan or inside India. That said, “the US and India’s interests are not far apart in either Pakistan or Afghanistan,” Schaffer argued. Both want Pakistan to “stay together, for the state to reassert its authority, and for it to do so in a way that hopefully cuts the legs off the Islamic extremist groups.” And in Afghanistan, both “would like to see stability; a move toward more effective government; and not having extremists, particularly with ties to al Qaeda, as the moving force in that country.” In practice, however, the US “has to put up with a substantial Pakistani role.” The question with which Schaffer concluded was, “Does the road to a happier Afghanistan have to lead through Kashmir?” Her short answer was no. “I think that the US needs to be focused on both problems.” It has an active role in Afghanistan, and a “largely passive role in India/Pakistan diplomacy.” Back-channel talks before Musharraf left office are “in my mind, the model of how you can get India/Pakistan diplomacy working again.” The US can help quietly and discreetly, but “there is in my judgment, no useful role for a high-profile diplomatic effort.”

Reported by Sarah Miller

~ Teresita Schaffer is the director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC. During her 30-year career with the US Foreign Service, she specialized in international economics and South Asia. From 1989 to 1992, she was deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia, and from 1995 to 1997, she was US Ambassador to Sri Lanka.

US Military Strategy in Afghanistan

The challenge of pursuing four different strategies with one tool.

Larry Goodson

Because his current work as a professor at the US Army War College made him the only speaker still in government service, Larry Goodson began his talk with the disclaimer that the views he was about express were his alone and not those of the War College, the Army, or the US government. Goodson went on to explain how his topic, the Army’s Afghanistan strategy, fits into the government’s overall policies in the South Asia region, noting that the military was only one tool of our national security policy makers (the others being “diplomacy, foreign trade, development, and information”), though it was currently our biggest tool. He cautioned that to understand any military strategy, we must first understand the national policy it was serving. He outlined President Obama’s two major statements of US Afghanistan policy: first his March 2009 “White Paper,” and later his speech at West Point. The President’s core goal, Goodson noted, was to “disrupt and defeat al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan and prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan.” Objectives supporting this core goal include building up the Afghan government and security forces, and getting more foreign (ie, NATO) involvement. After the first policy statement, General Stanley McChrystal was appointed to set the strategy and carry it out. Leaks of his strategy to the press then caused a policy re-evaluation that led to the President’s West Point speech. In that speech, President Obama emphasized transferring more of the burden to the regional authorities by: working more closely with Pakistan’s government in the border safe havens, building the Afghan government through a “civilian surge,” and providing the US military resources to make this transfer possible. To execute this policy, McChrystal called for a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy labeled COIN, with four major areas of emphasis. The first was using US troops to build up Afghan security forces (army and police) and engage in joint operations with them, using a “clear, hold, and build” approach, ie, “pushing into Taliban-held areas, clearing them of insurgents, then….holding those areas so that follow-on forces can come in to build infrastructure and services (to) strengthen the population’s connection to the (Afghan) government.” The second emphasis would focus on building “responsive and accountable governance” in the country to overcome disillusionment with the Karzai regime among US voters, our allies, and the Afghan people after the “fiasco of the August 2009 Afghan elections” and the notorious corruption in that government. McChrystal’s third area of strategic emphasis was to “gain the initiative” over the Taliban insurgency in the country, and Goodson cited the current campaign against Marjah, the Taliban stronghold in northern Helmand Province, as an example of this approach. The fourth and final strategic emphasis, called “focus of resources,” called for more population-friendly tactics, such as sharply reducing the likelihood of civilian casualties and “increasing the cultural and language training of the troops.” Goodson then examined the challenges to “weaving together successfully the four threads” of McChrystal’s COIN strategy, given the situation in Afghanistan. First he mentioned the problem of building a trusting relationship between the Karzai government and the Afghan people, given the former’s corruption and electoral chicanery. Then came the problem of trying to pursue four parallel but very different strategies—nation-building, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and conventional combat—with divided leadership and with a tool (the military) that is very expensive and really only good at one of the four missions (conventional combat). The next challenge discussed was that of dealing with the many players—Iran, China, Pakistan, Russia, and India, to name only a few—and the national interests at stake in this highly complex situation, in which everyone doubts the US ability to persevere. To this point, Goodson saw a major challenge to all four goals of the McChrystal strategy in Obama’s set date of July 2011 for the draw-down of the American military presence in Afghanistan. He asked, “How do we achieve (the needed) success in those areas of strategy that take a longer time period to ripen? And what about the enemy?” Goodson then mused on several disquieting similarities between our position in our eighth year in the Afghanistan war and that of the Soviet Union in 1987—the eighth year of their war in that country. He noted that the USSR “left Afghanistan in 1989 and ceased to exist in December 1991, and added, “I do not wish to reason by analogy; nor do I wish to ignore the lessons of history.” Either way, “the US faces a difficult conundrum, which put simply is this: we cannot afford to stay and we cannot afford to go.” We are left, he said, with the lame alternative of “the old ‘declare victory and get out before anyone can prove otherwise’ approach.” Goodman concluded by saying, “I disagree that the war in Afghanistan is lost and believe that we cannot afford to lose it,” yet added that he could not see how we could be successful in a war that will require a sustained effort when the long-term support of both the Afghan people and the American taxpayers is already in serious doubt. Having begun his talk with a disclaimer, Goodson ended with another, admitting that he “may have left (us) with more questions than answers” on this difficult topic.

Reported by Charlie Graham

~ Larry Goodson is the Professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of National Security and Strategy in the US Army War College. He conducts a special program on Afghanistan at the War College and consults frequently on South Asia with senior military leaders. He consults widely with both government and nongovernment agencies.

Assessing US Prospects and Policies in South Asia

US and NATO forces are now in the middle of an Afghan civil war.

Paul Pillar

Paul Pillar argued that vital US interests are not at stake in Afghanistan and that a substantial presence of US and NATO troops in the country will not lead to stability in such an impoverished, divided tribal land with no strong central government. Pillar, a leading expert on South Asia and a former senior counterterrorism official, maintained that US strategy in the region should focus on counterterrorism: in confronting, tracking, and defeating extremist forces such as al Qaeda. Al Qaeda leaders, he argued, are not even in Afghanistan any longer, have plenty of safe havens elsewhere, and would not be welcomed back by most Taliban forces if the latter regained control of major parts of the country. The new emphasis on counterinsurgency, Pillar added, will not succeed in bringing stability to the entire country due to a weak sense of nationhood, an illegitimate central government, and the amount of time and resources it would take to prevail even partially. “Even if (General Stanley) McChrystal’s strategy succeeds completely, that will stabilize only a part of the country, leaving plenty of safe havens (for terrorists). Meanwhile, the foreign, military occupation motivates and unites the disparate Taliban forces and drains any reservoir of good will towards the United States.” Pillar cited recent polls that show a dramatic drop in favorable attitudes towards the US in Afghanistan, despite extensive American-led improvements such as schools and new roads: from 80 per cent in favor in 2005, to barely more than 50 per cent in 2009. The US is engaged in Afghanistan today, according to Pillar, only because it was the origin of the 9/11 terrorist attack. The rationale for the US intervention after 9/11 was justified, and the war would have been undertaken by whoever was president at the time. At that time, the US was welcomed into the country, and the troops succeeded in routing al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. But the Bush administration’s decision to attack Iraq—which Pillar described as “a contrived war” based on false assumptions and intelligence—took valuable resources and attention from Afghanistan. The US should have declared victory in Afghanistan and gone home in 2003—or devoted more resources to rebuilding the country then. Today, in contrast to our position in 2003, US and NATO forces are in the middle of an Afghan civil war. “Our deep involvement in Afghanistan cannot be comprehended in a dispassionate analysis of US national interests,” Mr. Pillar said at one point. “This is all to do with preventing al Qaeda from conducting terrorist acts. First of all, al Qaeda is not even in Afghanistan. (Yet) we are focused on a surrogate enemy—the Taliban. And if the Taliban took over again, I see no reason that they would seek to host al Qaeda once more.” For one thing, he said, the Afghan Taliban, with a few exceptions, are not a transnational terror group. “Their goals are not bin Laden’s goals. They are one of the most insular bands ever to get the kind of international attention they are getting. And they do not care about the US except that we’re in the way.” He added that there are not even many Afghans involved in international terror. Furthermore, Pillar said he doubted that al Qaeda would want to move back into Afghanistan if the Taliban were to take over. “They know they would be exposed to the same kind of overwhelming US firepower they faced after 9/11.” Also, pointing out that much of the 9/11 attack was plotted in Spain, Germany, and the US, Pillar observed that al Qaeda has no shortage of safe havens. He cited Yemen and Somalia, and referred to the Nigerian origins and London education of the would-be Detroit bomber. “Al Qaeda leaders are successfully hidden in Northwest Pakistan today. And ideology and readiness of radicalized recruits are far more critical to them than a piece of acreage.” Pillar also asserted that a Taliban victory in Afghanistan would not lead to an increase in instability in Pakistan. Pakistan, he said, sees the Afghan Taliban as an asset and an insurance policy, as part of “strategic depth” in their obsessive rivalry with India. He does not believe Pakistani leaders would decrease their cooperation with the US in tackling terrorism, even if the Taliban were once again in control of Afghanistan. He addressed the “credibility” question of a US pull-back. “One more rationale for our continuing engagement is that to back down from this existing commitment would severely damage our credibility.” That position is strikingly reminiscent of the war in Vietnam, a war in which Pillar served as an officer. “That underlying assumption is as unexamined and invalid today as it was then,” he said. He noted that the US would not criticize its allies if they pulled back from a conflict in which their core interests were not at stake. He recommended a book by Dartmouth professor, Darryl Press, titled Calculating Credibility. In a brief question-and-answer period, Pillar expanded on his presentation. He said a pull-back might lead to a short-term “propaganda victory” for al Qaeda, but that would not last very long. A pull-back later, he noted, would be considered an even larger defeat. As for what constitutes vital US interests in South Asia, he listed three, none of which is improved by an extensive engagement in Afghanistan. The first is preventing a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and others include the stability of Pakistan and expanding the now improved US relations with India. He said he supports US and NATO negotiations with the Taliban, a central tenet of keynote speaker Ahmed Rashid’s talk. He said such negotiations should focus on a “set of individual bargains” with various Afghan tribal chiefs. He said he would not try to put a limit on the number of US troops that will need to stay in the country for a certain period of time—troops and personnel needed to pursue an effective counterterrorism strategy. But the aim should be to work out an accommodation that allows a full withdrawal in time.

Reported by Fred Hill

~ Paul Pillar is Georgetown University’s Director of Graduate Studies at the Center for Peace and Security Studies. He retired in 2005 from a 28-year career in the US intelligence community, in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia.

US Policies and Prospects in South Asia

The execution of our policy will determine our success or failure.

Ronald Neumann

By the time Ambassador Neumann took the stage, four speakers (Rashid, Azoy, Goodson, and Pillar) had, in combination, presented a fairly glum assessment of the American intervention in Afghanistan, citing a largely failed mission and only dim hopes for a graceful exit. Neumann took immediate issue with this assessment. He made four quick points:

• While there may be no possibility of military victory in Afghanistan, there is still such a thing as defeat, something we need to avoid.
• A precipitous exit from Afghanistan would tend to destabilize Pakistan.
• There is more time than is generally conceded.
• Strong presidential leadership could stiffen the resolve of the American people enough to see the Afghan government through the next two to three years, the time needed for our current policy to take effect.

He then went on to outline our current policy: to nurse the current Afghan government into a state of stability and sustainability, secure the population, and place responsibility for its continued security in Afghan hands. He expressed comfort with this policy, but stressed that it wasn’t enough to have the right policy in place; execution of that policy will determine our success or failure. Because earlier speakers had endorsed proposals for negotiation with the Taliban, Neumann turned his attention next to the Taliban and any possible role it might play in a generally healthy Afghan future. He indicated that the earlier assertions of distance between the Taliban and al Qaeda could not be confirmed by his experience and current knowledge. He thought it was relevant that we referred to 9/11 as a terrorist attack, but within al Qaeda and the Taliban it was called “the raid on New York.” That was a sign to him that they viewed it not as a single isolated event, but as part of an enduring war. “9/11 looked to us like the beginning of something, but that’s because we hadn’t been paying attention,” Neumann asserted. For them it was part of a much larger and continuing struggle. He suggested that President Obama’s articulation of an 18-month surge was a strategic error, because it puts the Taliban and al Qaeda in a position to wait out American departure, as they had waited out the eventual retreat of Soviet forces. In his own interaction with General McChrystal and other military figures, Neumann had been assured that the 18-month interval was meant to end in a “possible and gradual” ramping down of our forces, dependent on the situation on the ground. He deplored that the President himself had talked about the 2011 date as part of a fairly strict timetable for withdrawal, something that could only harden our adversaries. Neumann characterized himself as “relatively optimistic,” at least compared to earlier speakers. He said that although there was evidence of some recent decline among Afghans in their support for a US presence, they were still strongly on our side, “though they sometimes wonder if we know what we’re doing.” He said that support for the Taliban was weak, and implied it would become weaker. He then turned to an assessment of the Karzai government. Karzai had his problems, the Ambassador admitted—including bias toward a much too centralized government—but pointed out that he was nonetheless a very savvy politician. He may have fudged the extent of his victory in the recent election, but all observers seemed willing to admit that he had fairly won the votes of some 46 percent of the electorate, a margin that was larger that Bill Clinton’s in his first presidential run. Neumann said that Karzai was “the man we have got,” and went on to reflect that deserting a leader in a government we were trying to sustain had never been a great idea (think Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam). The new cabinet, in his opinion, had a good number of competent, powerful figures, albeit with a few “clunkers” thrown in. Yes, the 2009 election had cost Karzai legitimacy in Western eyes, but legitimacy in Afghanistan came from different sources, and could still be earned back. For many Afghans, elections are a problematic concept anyway, and a bit of artful finagling in the vote counts would not weigh very heavily against a figure of Karzai’s stature. The election could have been less delegitimizing, but we handled it badly. The image of Senator Kerry reading the riot act to Karzai was, for many Afghans, an indication that their president was little more than a US puppet. One of Karzai’s best qualities, Neumann told us, was his fine sense of how much change the Afghan people can be expected to accept, and how much is too much. He said that we lacked this very sense, and had repeatedly gotten ourselves in trouble as a result. Neumann returned to the matter of policy and execution, and repeated his contention that execution is now what matters most. How can we proceed from here? Well, we could short-change training, for example; save money on support; de-staff key assistance bodies; and sure enough, we’d get a lackluster result. On the other hand, we could train lavishly and keep sustaining troops at the ready during the process, and expect to get a very acceptable result: an Afghan security force that could eventually hold the society together without our help. But that could not be done in 18 months. The only thing we could engineer in 18 months, he said, was our own defeat. Finally, Neumann observed that our military presence in Germany, South Korea, and Kosovo had endured far longer than the Afghan venture. These presences were not actively engaged, but still represented a stabilizing influence. Such a long-term, nonactivist US military presence in Afghanistan, he thought, might be a reasonable measure to achieve peace in this volatile region.

Reported by Tom DeMarco

~ Ronald Neumann is the President of the American Academy of Diplomacy in Washington, DC, an organization of former senior US Foreign Service officers formed to strengthen the resources of American diplomats. Before his retirement in 2007, Neumann was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and three-times Ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain, and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, among many other postings.

The View from Kabul

Athanasios Moulakis

Athanasios Moulakis presented a remarkable selection of slides that gave Conference participants an insider’s view of the city of Kabul, and he used the images as a basis for his observations about life in today’s Afghanistan. He began his remarks by explaining that he had spent two years in Kabul, setting up The American University of Afghanistan, the purpose of which was to bring “best American practices to a country that needs them very badly…to bring them in a way that is respectful of their ways, and to weave these practices into the texture of the society in such a way that they have a long-lasting effect…I think we are doing not only a piece of education but a piece of public diplomacy in the best sense.” The first slide was a view from his terrace looking out over Kabul. Today there is no trace of the old empire, he observed. Kabul was once a pleasant garden town, but now everything is covered with sandbags. Walls are made even higher by barbed wires. A Shiite madrassah funded by private Iranian sources was clearly visible; it houses the best library in Afghanistan. But Moulakis spoke of “the extraordinary mixture of vibrancy and squalor that is the life of Kabul.” The city stands at an elevation of 6,000 feet, surrounded by mountains that rise up precipitously. Electricity (one power line from Tajikistan and another more recent one from Uzbekistan) is weak and sporadic. There is little public lighting. “You can see the most beautiful skies…the night skies in particular…Kabul is the only major city I know over which you can see the Milky Way.” Of a slide of houses climbing up the hills, he observed, “…most of them (are) illegal, and mostly without proper sewage…mostly mud brick, very well-suited material to the climate…streets are either mud or dust…the amount of dust is unbelievable…full of cars…pollution from generators that are everywhere…filth rises in the early morning until you lose sight of everything around you…” The per capita income is $2 per day. Life expectancy is 40 years. The country has the worst infant mortality rate in the world. The literacy rate is less than 20 percent, worse for women. “Yet there is an extraordinary sense of beauty, of the good life,” said Moulakis as he showed a display in a marketplace of fish, artfully arranged amid leaves to entice shoppers. “The streets are full of vitality and enterprise.” Empowering women is important but difficult. “In any (other) country, no matter how poor…a woman can take out a tray and (sell something)…In Afghanistan she cannot; there are no saleswomen,” said Moulakis. He went on to describe a women’s gym started by a woman in her home. Her father owned the house, the equipment was owned by her brother, and the business was owned by her husband. Of children in the Kabul streets, Moulakis told the Conference, “If (they are) not orphans, they might as well be. They have to fend for themselves. He told of a Colorado foundation project that organizes children to collect rubbish to make heating briquettes, saving the children from indigence and prostitution—which he said is not often talked about but very widespread. Moulakis lived in a so-called Pakistani house—“Anything awful you call Pakistani,” he explained. These grand, new mansions are also called “poppy pop-ups.” Poppies, one third of the economy, affect the lives of almost everyone. Ninety percent of the world’s opium is grown in Afghanistan. “Opium…is a grateful crop. You just throw the seed and up it comes. And you collect it with very cheap labor, women and children” said Moulakis. But poppies are not a traditional Afghan crop; they were once grown only sparingly. There was very little addiction. Poppy-growing now is the result of the wartime economy. “The profits are certainly not for the farmer. The farmer (grows poppies) because he can’t make a living any other way…the profits go to the people who control the transport and the protection.” The warlords who traffic in opium are usurers: farmers have to repay debts at large interest rates in kind. “If we in our wisdom go out and burn the crop, of course the farmer is not off the hook. The narco-usurer will either come in and chop his hand off or take his daughter. It is a cruel country,” he observed. No offices are being built—only “Pakistani houses”. The only businesses that work are telecom companies, airlines, and banks. Afghanistan is traditionally an agricultural country, and the agriculture has been sorely neglected. “People with skills do not work for Afghan ministries—(they) work for the Red Cross, for the Dutch Embassy.” Humanitarian aid works; developmental aid is more difficult. Agencies face the dilemma of delivering the aid themselves or hiring local people or agencies. Moulakis said, “If you give the local (institutions) the opportunity to do it, chances are it won’t get done or won’t get done well…if you don’t, you undermine the authority of the state you are trying to build up…What will happen to the donor-driven economy when the donors leave?” Showing a slide of a spectacular courtyard, he said, “This, on the other hand, is one of the wonderful things…the Tomb of Babur, the great emperor who started the Moghul empire in India…He…loved Kabul because it is a wonderfully cool and lovely place and has the world’s most beautiful roses,” said Mr. Moulakis. The garden has been restored by the Aga Khan, who has also funded universities and other projects. “This is typical of the work of the Aga Khan—in perfect taste, using the best people, in a way that is modest and superb and lifting of the spirit (in a) place that needs moments of peace and beauty…” Looking at a slide of an army checkpoint going up to the mountains, Moulakis pointed out that even if the Afghan state were able to collect all the taxes due, the amount would barely cover the army’s expenses, but not any other salaries, services, or facilities. “We may build up the army, but it will still have to come from supplementary votes in the US Congress.” A final slide showed a school with tented classrooms in front of a spare building on a hill in the Kabul suburbs. Teachers, not buildings, are the problem with the educational system, observed Mr. Moulakis. “It is impossible to build up capacity until the educational possibilities improve…there (have been) improvements, but the starting point is extremely low.” “I hope that with the help of the generosity of the American people, we will be able to cast a ray of hope on this extraordinarily brave and much harried people,” concluded Mr. Moulakis.

Reported by Lys McLaughlin-Pike

Q&A

Q: Can the Afghan people survive the 30 years of war? Are you hopeful?

Moulakis: In the beginning, yes; I’m not so sure now. Of course they will survive, but on their own terms. Our aid must be on their terms. Not too fast with women’s education. We must respect their ways.

Q: Do people want us to be there?

Moulakis: We are resented because we are needed; we are essential. Yes, we are unpopular—we are Western.

Q: How are the students in The American University of Afghanistan educated?

Moulakis: One in five is a woman. All have been in exile. Their education has been patchy. The first high school in the country was built in the 1920s. Afghans are largely illiterate. It will take generations to bring literacy to much of the population.

~ Athanasios Moulakis was the former Provost and Acting President of The American University of Afghanistan, after serving as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars in Washington, DC. He has held numerous other academic and administrative posts at European and North American colleges and universities.

Lessons for American Policy

We have no choice but to be engaged in Asia.

Nicholas Burns

Conference moderator and final speaker Nicholas Burns had the complex task of attempting to summarize the views presented thus far. Commending all the previous speakers for the quality of their insights on a complex topic—“international politics at its most challenging,” he observed enthusiastically that, “I found myself agreeing with thoughts of opposing points of view, spoken from the heart.” He singled out for special praise what he called the “human interest” content often missing from other similar conferences: “…politics where it really matters, at the grass roots.” Burns then went on to share five thoughts on US policy in South Asia derived from the Conference speakers. • Firstly, he emphasized the vital interests of the United States in the Middle East and South Asia, citing the ongoing shift of American engagement away from Europe and into Asia in response to long-term strategic challenges and interests reaching from Israel, Iran, and India to China. Burns called this a “profound shift” that would go on “50 to100 years into our children’s and grandchildren’s lifetimes” for many reasons. India, he pointed out, seeks a strategic US relationship while in the process of forging a state with multiple ethnic and religious components, and while becoming a key player in the region and in the world. Both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. Iran and China are part of the mix. “This is not a distant hinterland. It is actually the core of the 21st century’s strategic challenges …” Burns noted that the US is “already engaged” in South Asia on multiple levels, strategically and economically, and really has “has no choice” in the matter. • Burns’ point two was that “the US can’t walk away from Afghanistan” due to that nation’s role in the Pakistan/India conflict and our “interwoven relationship with all three.” He noted that, after the defeat of the Taliban regime, our primary focus moved to Iraq, causing us to “take our eye off the ball” in Afghanistan and assume that the Taliban was no longer a danger there. Our conventional military effort, Burns said, became less and less effective: “… we have taken lots of towns but the lives of the people in those towns have not necessarily improved.” Our ongoing strategy, he said, must “rely less on fire power…and more on securing people where they are,” and most importantly, “hooking that up with economic aid and rehabilitation.” This assistance would have to focus on agriculture, infrastructure, the economy, and education. Burns concluded that he felt that the new counterinsurgency strategy was attempting to do all these things, and that we had to give it a try “because we haven’t done so effectively until now.” • The above notwithstanding, Burns’ third point was to caution that military victory may not be possible in Afghanistan, adding that an increase of combat troops may not lead to defeat of the Taliban and that any “victory” of the traditional kind would “not be worth the cost and effort.” He characterized the new US strategies and military activities as designed to prepare the ground for a transition to a diplomatic solution, through slowing the advance of the Taliban both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Burns saw an opportunity for reconciliation down the road once the security of the population is established and the local governments are able to maintain order on their own. Concluding on this point, he noted that “most civil wars around the world end in reconciliation” and that he couldn’t see the Afghan situation ending any other way. • As point four, Burns took up Samina Quraeshi’s cry, “Don’t give up on Pakistan!” Burns noted that that currently US/Pakistan relations are mired in media negativity and mistrust between the two governments. Yet, he warned, we can’t ignore the importance of Pakistan for many reasons: its location with Afghanistan between India and Iran, its independent border region linked to Afghanistan by tribal ties, its giving the Central Asian nations access to the coast, its possession of nuclear weapons technology, and its ongoing dispute with India over the Kashmir region. Pakistan deserves the same meaningful assistance that is required in Afghanistan to improve the lives of the Pakistani people and to provide its government with the tools to succeed. Not just military aid is required, Burns stressed, pointing out that it is vital to pair that commitment with substantial economic aid, cultural understanding, and educational assistance. Regarding Pakistan’s relations with India, we need to help with the resolution of past conflicts by supporting a dialogue aimed at finding common ground. At the same time, we must reassure both parties that this is possible without a threat to either nation’s sovereignty. Burns summed up: “We cannot walk away from this challenge. We have reason to be hopeful that extremism will not dictate the future of this region as long as meaningful dialogue is accompanied by the tools to improve the lives of the population.” • As his fifth and final point, Burns observed that “we need to build a global partnership with India.” He pointed out the importance of Secretary Rice’s decision to “de-link” our “zero-sum and regional” policy toward these two South Asian powers and develop separate relationships with each. Stating his belief that “the single most important issue we will face in the next century is China,” Burns said that the best, peaceful way to deal with the rise of China is to create a counterweight with other Asian powers. India, the second largest and second most economically successful nation in Asia, would be the key to this strategy. He further pointed out the growing business links between US and India, with Indian companies and Indian Americans being one of the most dynamic areas of business growth in America itself. Despite being the second largest Muslim country in the world, India “has struggled to develop a multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation.” In the mix of South Asia, Burns said, “India…can bring special understanding to the task of providing help with schools, infrastructure, and political progress without having to pose a military threat to its neighbors,” if the obvious political issues can be overcome. A final reason for improving our relationship with India, Burns felt, is to give us more influence in encouraging it to be a more positive, supportive factor in the changing world political order and to take more responsibility in international institutions and cooperative efforts. Regarding the question raised at this Conference’s opening, as to whether we would all feel better today, Burns said, “I feel better,” affirming his belief that US foreign policy in South Asia was now on the right track, even though there is no guarantee of success. As he put it, “I do believe in the goodness of this country and the effectiveness of our government and our soldiers and diplomats to do the right thing and to be effective.”

Reported by Ilmarinen G. Vogel

Q&A

Q: How does Central Asian oil affect strategy and policy in this region?

Burns: Our efforts to get India and Pakistan to utilize this resource to lessen their reliance on Iranian oil have been frustrated by the lack of security along the possible pipeline routes. The oil issue is also impacting the China/India competition in the Indian Ocean.

Q: Will NATO survive its failures in Afghanistan?

Burns: It must, because NATO is the world’s “best collection of military cohesion for peacekeeping.” That said, it’s undeniable that the European members’ performance in Afghanistan to date has been disappointing.

Q: Will it be feasible to have a “Marshall Plan” type of development program for Pakistan and Afghanistan, with contributions from all the interested nations in the region?

Burns: As has been pointed out several times, it’s crucial that the new economic powers—India, Brazil, and especially China—begin to contribute more to global challenges.

~ Nicholas Burns is now the Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics and Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Kennedy School, Harvard University. He retired from the US State Department in 2008, after a 27-year career that included service as Ambassador to Greece and NATO, and Under Secretary of State.

Wrapping Up: Questions for All

The Camden Conference traditionally concludes with a discussion panel, allowing the audience to ask questions and the speakers to vigorously engage each other.

The Camden Conference traditionally concludes with a discussion panel that takes questions from the audience and engages the speakers with one another. Sunday’s panel this year included all of the Conference speakers, plus Cynthia Schneider, an expert in cultural diplomacy. She is a Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East, at the Brookings Institute, and she teaches Diplomacy and Culture at Georgetown University. Nicholas Burns moderated this year’s panel, directing each question to the speaker or speakers with relevant expertise. Burns asked that the first audience microphone be brought to a young Afghan student attending the Conference from a local academy in Maine. Burns noted that the student had been listening to other people talk about his country all weekend, and he certainly deserved to address the panel. He asked the first two questions.

Q:Do you think the Afghan people are ready to accept negotiations with the Taliban? My family and I endured the pain of their rule.

Neumann: I know that there is enormous nervousness among Afghans about negotiations. But President Obama has been very clear that we will negotiate some form of accommodation which brings people into an existing political system, not the granting of territorial control. Afghans have reason to be nervous, but they need not assume that we are going to rush out and be stupid. Rashid: Afghanistan civil society cannot develop in a state of war. We need to bring the war to an end—that’s the bottom line—not by surrender or leaving or the collapse of the government, but by negotiation. We will have to draw red lines. The progress achieved by the Afghan people in the last nine years in areas like education, health, and women’s empowerment cannot be rolled back by compromises. Ending the war and not rolling back achievements—those are the two benchmarks for the Afghan people. Azoy: Acceptance of negotiations depends on which Afghan you talk to. The farther south you go and the more Pashtun, the greater the acceptance. The farther north you go, the less—because they remember that the Taliban were not only religiously extreme, but ethnically ferocious. This time, the terms will have to be circumscribed very carefully in advance, in order for non-Pashtuns to accept even the notion of negotiations. Otherwise, there will be civil war.

Q:After the country is secured, how will aid be provided? Will it be administered by corrupt NGOs, or does the US government have some other strategy?

Neumann: The aid for Marjah initially will be funded through the military, for immediate construction. There will be an effort to put more money through Afghan agencies and organizations, in order to build their capacity. We will have to set standards for success that allow for some failures, but we need to build those capacities. Rashid: I advocate drastically reforming government aid agencies such as US AID. We don’t want to hand off the aid process to the military; that contradicts the very meaning of a civil society. The problem is that civilians can’t deliver aid in the midst of an insurgency. Our failure to reconstruct the aid process has led to the military doing things that are not their job. We don’t have an agency anywhere in the world that can deliver aid during an insurgency. Schneider: Afghanistan has suffered from international aid tending to turn away from agriculture, in part because it doesn’t bring quick results. Aid is now shifting back to agriculture, globally and in Afghanistan, because of a common-sense recognition that health begins with eating, and that many countries that require aid, including Afghanistan, are largely agrarian. Leading figures in Afghanistan will be setting up significant aid programs run by Afghans, and that should help.

Q:If uncoupling the Taliban from al Quaeda is a good idea, what is the priority to encourage it?

Pillar: Reasons to hope for that decoupling come not from anything we’d do specifically. The basic interests of the two groups are different, and friction was already developing when both groups were in Afghanistan. Our concern is to avoid doing anything that would be counterproductive and slow down the natural division between the two. Goodson: Tactically, there have been efforts to go after the senior leaders of both groups. But both are part of a larger Islamic militancy, and we need to try to change that orientation. We do need the uncoupling, but we also need a rejection of militant Islamism, and that debate is going on in Pakistan. The fringe elements that exist in Pakistan are providing the sanctuary for extremists. I agree that we should stay out of it and let the more moderate Afghan and Pakistani majorities carry on the debate.

Q:Is there a real shift in the role the military is playing, and is it helpful? (Burns added a secondary question: should we rebuild the State Department and US AID so that the military doesn’t have to play that role?)

Schaffer: Both of the above. The military has resources and a tremendous capacity to move fast in times of crisis, leading them to take on the role of disaster relief. But it is essential that the military not be the only game in town in urgent civilian work. The US government needs to increase the talent and skills in the State Department and AID. AID needs to get back to where its roots and heart are, and disaster relief and civil reconstruction in tough places would be a good place to start. They now have an Office of Transition Initiatives that specializes in postconflict reconstruction; Afghanistan isn’t right for them because it’s not postconflict. Schneider: In the area of cultural diplomacy, the Defense Department has astonishing resources and is using them intelligently. Secretary Gates has spoken about the importance of increasing diplomacy, but we haven’t seen the money for it yet. Goodson: The Department of Defense has started something called the Afghanistan/Pakistan Hands Program to develop expertise. When people come back from a deployment, they continue to work on Afghanistan to deepen their understanding. Then when they go back, they go to the same area. It’s a change in the way we think about our operational and tactical approach.

Q:What natural resources or human resources can be developed in Afghanistan to replace poppy production as one-third of the GDP?

Moulakis: What is needed is an entrepreneurial spirit, one that allows the creation of jobs, so the crux is human potential and that means education, education for jobs. The traditional subsistence (agricultural) economy has been allowed to wither. There is a great need for better packaging and transport of crops. The important thing is to create alternatives (to poppies), but we have to keep the farmer in the center of the image. Afghanistan needs access to markets other than through Pakistan, where Afghan goods are relabeled as Pakistani. Transport of goods by sea involves political hurdles that will require great patience to develop. Quraeshi: Again I turn toward women. The domestic realm can be turned into small industry. Empower women to practice crafts they know—carpets, embroidery—small things, but they can grow exponentially. The smallest economic impetus can encourage education—learning more to enhance productivity. The goods made by them should be labeled by them. They are pirated because they are valuable. Rashid: Afghan farmers do not want to grow poppies; if they had something else that gave them an income, they would grow it. The tragedy is that in nine years, we haven’t nurtured agriculture. The investment in agriculture is finally coming. I agree with Samina that in Afghanistan, women will be empowered through work. Many women are teachers and nurses, and they are often the only breadwinner in the household. That completely changes the internal balance of society, and there is more respect for women. We don’t need feminist tracts—just get women into the work force. Schaffer: Two major Bangladeshi organizations that extend microcredit loans to women are in Afghanistan: the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee and the Grameen Bank. Neumann: Agriculture is important, but you have to understand the time required. Crop substitution requires creation of a value chain. Farmers can grow vegetables, but a customer like a big hotel, for instance, requires reliability and consistency. That gets you into areas like cold storage and packing. We know there are structures for gas and oil, but in order to be commercially viable, the Afghan government has to set up a transparent bidding structure that attracts foreigners. We know there are jewels—lapis, emeralds—that have been mined for centuries. What’s needed now are roads all over the country and cheap power. We have to do more, and there will be a time lag.

Q:Is it realistic to anticipate a surge in the funds needed to move Afghanistan forward?

Schaffer: We’ve talked about the potential elements in that surge. But it’s about security in the first order. Burns: One thing our government can do is urge European countries, if they won’t go into combat, to contribute more—billions more—to the economic side of the equation. Goodson: Usually, there are lots of pledges, but they don’t get paid. All that is part of the political realities and the ticking clock of public disinterest. I would echo Ahmed that the way Western aid is structured leads to the perception that the aid is just lining someone’s pockets. So my answer to the question would be no.

Q:How long does the US/NATO have to stay in Afghanistan to make it a victory?

Pillar: That’s an excellent question because it is one that never gets answered, in terms of dollars or lives. All the best estimates suggest that given the magnitude of the task, for anything we could call victory, we are talking double digits in years. But we are not talking about that in terms of the tolerance of the American public. Burns: For historical comparison, we are still in Germany and Japan, Korea, Bosnia and Kosovo long after those wars have ended. These things take time to finish the difficult challenges. Schaffer: But in none of those places is a war going on. At some point our presence becomes peaceful and the input is primarily economic. The character of our presence is very different.

Q:How will our nuclear agreement with India, relative to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT), be a factor in our negotiations with Pakistan and Iran?

Burns: I was the negotiator for that agreement. The US sanctioned India for 35 years because they developed nuclear weapons outside the NPT. The sanctions did not work. Bush and Rice faced that, and decided to bring India into the nonproliferation system. The deal was that we would remove the sanctions, and in return India would submit to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. Not only did we bring a large country into the system; we also sent a message to Iran and North Korea that a country that plays by the rules and safeguards its nuclear material will be rewarded. I think it was a good deal for the US and for the world. Schaffer: Today, nuclear leakage to dangerous recipients is far more important than it was at the time of the NPT. Pakistan deeply resents the deal with India, but we are not likely to offer any similar deal to Pakistan, because Pakistan has been providing nuclear know-how to the some of the most dangerous people in the world. Burns: There could never be such a deal with Pakistan, until Pakistan becomes a more responsible country about its nuclear technology. Their sale of nuclear technology on the black market did enormous damage. But India is now a strategic partner, and that will be important to us in maintaining a balance of power with China over the next 50 years—another consideration we had very much in mind during the negotiations.

Q:Would the panel develop the religious issues underpinning the conflict?

Rashid: Essentially there has been a perversion in understanding Islam. The al Quaeda concept of global jihad, the elevation of jihad above all other Islamic precepts, is a very extreme interpretation of Islam. And suicide bombing is anathema to Islam. The Taliban, on the other hand, does not believe in global jihad; their jihad is very specific to liberate Afghanistan. They have “imported” suicide bombing as a tactic. There’s a big difference in religious terms between these two groups. Quraeshi: Religious illiteracy is an important thing here. Islam is a way of life that is very flexible. Indonesian practice is very different from Wahabi Arabian practice. But when believers are illiterate in their own religion, it allows others to collapse their understanding of it into a politicized form. Neumann: Religion and the violent extremist versions of it are not the primary motivators here, except for a small group. Afghan insurgents captured in a 2006 offensive gave as their three top reasons for joining the revolt: friction between tribes, friction between tribes and the government, and economic issues, with religion coming in a laggard fourth. Schaffer: In Afghanistan we’re dealing with a conservative society where the rule is to do what your father did. Thus, much of their local tradition comes to be described incorrectly as Islamic, largely on a selective basis. Pillar: Theology has relatively little to do with the violent behavior that concerns us the most. It has more to do with strategic considerations. Osama bin Laden’s stroke of genius—calling for jihad against the distant enemy, America—was strategic, not religious. In the ranks of international terrorists, there is not a wave of piety.

Q:Humanitarian NGOs have been critical of NATO’s using aid as a nonlethal weapon of war and thus blurring lines between humanitarian aid and military-led activities driven by political motives. What are your thoughts on this?

Goodson: There are no good guidelines for providing aid during a conflict. So the military has had to be the default provider. The concern is a reasonable one, but the practice is not likely to change anytime soon. Azoy: I’m a big fan of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), military teams in a province to act as military safeguards and civil reconstruction teams. They do wonderful work for the most part and are well-funded and well-equipped. They can accomplish more than less well-funded NGOs. I suspect that some NGO staff may feel that the PRTs are encroaching on what they do. Neumann: The PRTs do good work but there are blurred lines. The problem had three aspects. First there’s the military doing reconstruction in situations where no one else can. Then you find cases where the military is doing things that civilians could do. Finally there’s the case where the military is doing things that it doesn’t do very well, but this is often because the military has the funding for the job. One needs to be realistic.

Reported by Emily Lusher

2010 Study Guide

Study Guide to the 2010 Camden Conference: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India: Crossroads of Conflict

Welcome to the Camden Conference Study Guide to the 2010 Camden Conference: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India: Crossroads of Conflict

This year we have created a Study Guide in an effort to make the Conference materials more accessible to teachers and students. This set of materials provides not only specific indexing of talks presented at the annual Conference, but also a structure and orientation for the study of international relations that will open exciting learning opportunities for teachers and students in the classroom.

The purpose of this guide is to make the Camden Conference Camcast collection more accessible and user-friendly to teachers and students at the secondary level. This set of materials provides not only specific indexing of talks presented at the Camden Conference, but also a structure and orientation to the study of International Relations that will open exciting learning opportunities for you and your students in the classroom.

Four key components provide structure to the study of international relations in this guide. They include:

• Policy Assessment
• Conflict Analysis
• Cultural Considerations
• Impact of Globalization

In the pages that follow, you and your students will find an Index of video clips from the 2010 Conference organized according to the four components above. Each video clip ranges from 2-10 minutes in length. In addition, you will find an introductory explanation of each component as it relates to the study of international relations, a study (or viewer’s) guide with essential questions.

For the Study Guide to the 2011 Camden Conference, The Challenges of Asia, please click here.

The Study Guide is also available for download as a compliment to the Camden Conference website which is home to the Camcast collection as well as a wide variety of supplemental materials including articles, book lists, a calendar of upcoming community events, press releases, membership opportunities, links to other related websites and Camcasts from previous conferences dating back to 2006.

For the key elements of International Relations and their relationship to the Maine Learning Results for Social Studies, please click here.

We hope you and your students find this Guide useful and engaging. Please contact us if you have any questions or comments by email.

Thank you for sharing the Camden Conference and the study of International Relations with your students!

This program is funded by a grant from the Maine Humanities Council.

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