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.
AHMED RASHIDI 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.
More Ahmed Rashid Quotes
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We should have built a State in Afghanistan with an army and a police force first.
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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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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.
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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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Despite all the dire predictions made in 2001, the Afghans have given the international community, its aid workers and soldiers a large window of opportunity to repair the damage done by 25 years of war.
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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 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.
AHMED RASHID -
The Afghans can’t point and say, “Oh, the Americans built that road. They built that telecommunications facility.
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The Americans make their usual recommendations. They want to train the army for the fight with the rebels. US special forces are already in Mali.
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Russia is now becoming increasingly nervous about a more permanent U.S. presence in Central Asia.
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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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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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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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In my view, the Western model of influencing the development of third world countries is doomed to failure.
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In these extremist groups, which then provided them with safe houses, cars, and not just in the border areas but also in the cities. Rooting out Al Qaeda in Pakistan now is where the main battle is being fought.
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What everyone underestimated was the acute unpopularity of the Taliban, even in the Pashtun areas.
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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.
AHMED RASHID -
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?
AHMED RASHID -
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?
AHMED RASHID -
But all development programs of the United States and the European countries unfortunately exclude the private sector, which could make investments based on profitability.
AHMED RASHID -
They built that electricity powerhouse,” because nothing has been built so far.
AHMED RASHID -
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 -
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.
AHMED RASHID -
The fact that there are no longer large units of Al Qaeda running around means you don’t need B-52s.
AHMED RASHID -
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.
AHMED RASHID