That 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.
AHMED RASHIDOf course, many of them did support the Taliban. But you cannot equate all Pashtuns with the Taliban.
More Ahmed Rashid Quotes
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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 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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The biggest mistake Barack Obama could have made is to change quite a few things in his Afghanistan policy. He increased the number of troops and at the same time set the US withdrawal date to 2014.
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Pashtun nationalism is reasserting itself. Its political history spans several hundred years.
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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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They built that electricity powerhouse,” because nothing has been built so far.
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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.
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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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The Afghans can’t point and say, “Oh, the Americans built that road. They built that telecommunications facility.
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The Pashtuns are angry at the Americans because, one, they’re still being bombed, and two, they perceive that the Americans are backing the Tajik faction, which controls the army and security forces in Kabul.
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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 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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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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There’s a sense of desperation in Afghanistan because of the lack of funding and the fact that the U.S. only has a one-track military strategy. It doesn’t have an economic and political game plan.
AHMED RASHID