Kabul Center advisor Ali Jalali speaks at Council on Foreign Relations Symposium
Feb 26, 2009-Washington, DC-Kabul Center for Strategic Studies‟ advisor Ali Jalali, former Interior Minister, participated in a panel discussion hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations on NATO and Afghanistan. Other speakers included former UN Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno; and Barnett Rubin, Center for International Cooperation, New York University. The panel was moderated by Stewart
Patrick, Senior Fellow at the CFR.
During the discussion, Minister Jalali warned of the risks in arming tribal militias to fight the insurgency: “They will take your money, they will take your weapons, like the did in 2006, and they‟ll go.” He also noted that Afghanistan is a “battlefield of many, many states” and cautioned that “if you wait [to settle” the long-running conflicts between, say, India and Pakistan that are being fought in Afghanistan, “we do not have that much time.” He added that “the terrorists, the insurgents, whatever you
call them, they have a lot of time. In Afghanistan all rebellions had one strategy, traditionally…outlast the other side.”
The Afghan people, he argued, believe that the government has failed them and this is why they are unable to stand up to the insurgents. “Yes, there‟s no military solution, but you can lose militarily. And the level of acceptance of foreign troops in Afghanistan by the people of Afghanistan depends on their effectiveness.
“If they are effective, they welcome them. If they are not, they are associated with all negative things, like civilian casualties, like searching of homes, violating culture, all these things.”
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