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.
AHMED RASHIDThat window, which has stayed open for nearly five years, with amazing good will from the Afghans, is threatening to close unless the world wakes up and deals with the crisis.
More Ahmed Rashid Quotes
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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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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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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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Now the United States has to ensure that Afghanistan does not immediately collapse after being left to itself in 2014.
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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 was a coming and going of Al Qaeda militants and leaders between Afghanistan and Pakistan for several years.
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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 Pashtuns feel discriminated against by the Americans because they supported the Taliban and the war is still going on in their region with continued U.S. bombing.
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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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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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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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You have a lot of suspicion from the neighbors of Afghanistan about U.S. intentions. Iran is already, to some extent, trying to undermine the U.S. in Afghanistan.
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We should remember that the Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.
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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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The key to breaking the Taliban taboo against women and the cultural brainwashing that the Taliban imposed upon many Afghans is to get women back into the workforce.
AHMED RASHID