The Soviets held to the tradition of colonialism. They raped the country and killed many people. But they also built dams, electrical power plants, streets, and technical schools.
AHMED RASHIDThey built that electricity powerhouse,” because nothing has been built so far.
More Ahmed Rashid Quotes
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Some Pakistanis fought for the Taliban. Pakistani extremist groups provided infrastructural support to Al Qaeda. There was a coming and going of Al Qaeda militants and leaders between Afghanistan and Pakistan for several years.
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The Taliban had become deeply unpopular and were actually discarded by the Pashtun population almost as quickly as they were in the north. I don’t see the Taliban coming back in any way.
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They are simply not capable of promoting the indigenous economy. Many billions of dollars flooded into Afghanistan, but without any significant effect.
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We should have built a State in Afghanistan with an army and a police force first.
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You need intelligence and special forces. And, most importantly, you need to resurrect Afghanistan from what is literally the graveyard of countries and transform it into a normal country, which the Afghans want.
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But all development programs of the United States and the European countries unfortunately exclude the private sector, which could make investments based on profitability.
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If Afghan soldiers continue to kill American soldiers as is happening these days, it can hardly be assumed that they will stay in Afghanistan in the long term. And what role are they to play?
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The West does not understand how to deal with states that no longer have any authority and are threatened by dissolution. Their efforts failed in Iraq as well as Afghanistan.
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What everyone underestimated was the acute unpopularity of the Taliban, even in the Pashtun areas.
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Our Pakistan elites are spoiled by permanent foreign aid and therefore find it difficult to change course. Pakistan needs someone who stands up and says: Fundamentalism is bad, capitalism is good.
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The strategy for peace-building in Afghanistan is economic aid, reconstruction, international security forces. On those lines, the U.S. has been extremely slow. And it has even blocked expanding security forces from Kabul to other cities.
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The United States only knows one form of intervention and that is the military one. Everything depends on drawn weapons. We should, however, develop a wider scope of action. And we should learn to be patient.
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I met a lot of the senior Taliban, and I asked them precisely [about Mullah Omar]. The most common answer was he is humble. And that was very true.
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There was a coming and going of Al Qaeda militants and leaders between Afghanistan and Pakistan for several years.
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I think within a year or so, perhaps, if 9/11 had not happened, in Afghanistan would have been a very broad-based general uprising against the Taliban.
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They built that electricity powerhouse,” because nothing has been built so far.
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America does not hold to the colonial tradition. America came, liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban and al-Qaida, came to an arrangement with Hamid Karzai, wanted to organize elections as soon as possible and then withdraw.
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It would have been better if the United Nations had sent a team to Mali right away to mediate between the government and the rebels. But where is the political initiative?
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The idea of a permanent U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, as opposed to an economic presence, is going to create a new wave of hostility toward the United States.
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[Mullah Omar] gave himself this religious title. So it was something that all those people there who swore an oath of loyalty to him as a religious leader could not easily get rid of.
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Pashtun nationalism is reasserting itself. Its political history spans several hundred years.
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The West would be well advised to change its approach towards failing states. At present, no major power can find the correct ways and means – and the numbers of failing states are increasing.
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vThis region harbors enormous potential. Pakistan could become the hub for the energy that is transported from Central Asia to South Asia. That could change the whole region.
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We never had reports of Mullah Omar living luxuriously or making money in large quantities or anything like that.
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Of course, many of them did support the Taliban. But you cannot equate all Pashtuns with the Taliban.
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The Bush administration thought that once there is a democracy, everything else will fall into place. If today you speak to the architects of the 2001 Afghanistan Conference in Bonn, they will tell you that instead of being fixated on elections.
AHMED RASHID