We never had reports of Mullah Omar living luxuriously or making money in large quantities or anything like that.
AHMED RASHIDBut all development programs of the United States and the European countries unfortunately exclude the private sector, which could make investments based on profitability.
More Ahmed Rashid Quotes
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The Afghans can’t point and say, “Oh, the Americans built that road. They built that telecommunications facility.
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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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Now the United States has to ensure that Afghanistan does not immediately collapse after being left to itself in 2014.
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I am confident that there are hedge funds, banks or investment companies that could allocate five percent of their portfolios for risky investments. In any event, for countries like Afghanistan the formation of an entrepreneurial class is of vital importance.
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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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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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In my view, the Western model of influencing the development of third world countries is doomed to failure.
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They were communists and had the same vision for Afghanistan that Stalin and Lenin had for the Soviet Union: Progress is communism plus electrification. And today? Today Kabul gets its electrical power from Uzbekistan, Herat from Iran and Jalalabad from Pakistan.
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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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We should remember that the Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.
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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.
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There is no way the Americans are going to be able to carry out a full scale war against Iraq and at the same time maintain the same kind of pressure on the Al Qaeda network in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Philippines, and Pakistan, as well as in Europe.
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The fact that there are no longer large units of Al Qaeda running around means you don’t need B-52s.
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The problem right now, which I’ve been pointing out very bluntly to American officials in Washington, is that the U.S. has no economic presence in Afghanistan.
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And China is not keen that the U.S. should be so close to its borders over a long period of time. Certainly, if the U.S. is going to be there for a long time, it’s going to exacerbate regional tensions.
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