PCR Project and USIP Event | Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos

After reading Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos, (notes on book below) you cannot help but admire a man who transcends biases and presents an authoritative and comprehensive account of U.S. involvement in nation-building in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia. On Friday, June 6th, the PCR Project and USIP hosted a discussion with Mr. Rashid who delivered a rich and informative overview of his book and views. Mr. Rashid demands a routing out of Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan before government-led negotiations continue with the militants. He explained that a government should not (and historically would not) talk with a guerrilla force unless that guerrilla force is losing—leaving the government with the upper hand. Mr. Rashid believes that in order for a U.S. strategy to work, the United States must help bring an end to the Kashmir issue with India. As long as the Pakistan military is tied down to the traditional security threat presented by Kashmir, it will not give its full attention to the growing militancy in the NWFP and FATA. Concentrating on the Kashmir issue, he argues, should be part of a new U.S. regional strategy, interlocking problems of the region as a whole. Mr. Rashid went on to tackle questions from the PCR Project Co-Director Rick Barton, followed by questions from an expert audience, moderated by J Alexander Thier, Senior Rule of Law Advisor, USIP. Please click here to watch the video. Below is a compilation of notes on the book written by myself and PCR Project research assistant, Mark Irvine. Please browse the notes--hopefully they will encourage you to read the book: Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia Ahmed Rashid Notes on the Introduction, Part I, and Part II by Mark Irvine Blurb: Essential reading if you want to understand U.S. involvement in South and Central Asia over the past three decades. Rashid's account is Against All Enemies from the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The story is told in a rich, highly readable narrative. INTRODUCTION A failed U.S. strategy. “Bush’s historical legacy will be one of failure…this book is an attempt to explain how that came about in Washington and on the ground in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia” (lviii). The war on terrorism has left the world more unstable than on September 11, 2001. The Al Qaeda threat has grown. Afghanistan is “staring down the abyss of state collapse” after the international community “failed to take advantage” of “an extended window of opportunity” of several years. Pakistan has gone through “a slower but equally bloody meltdown.” Dictatorships continue to rule in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. (xxxviii-xxxix) “The consequences of state failure in any single country are unimaginable…It is difficult to imagine how NATO could survive as the West’s leading military alliance if the Taliban are not defeated in Afghanistan or if bin Laden remains at large indefinitely. Yet the international community’s lukewarm commitment to Afghanistan after 9/11 has been matched only by its incompetence, incoherence, and conflicting strategies—all led by the United States.” (xxxix) “Most experts reckoned that Afghanistan…needed about $4 to $5 billion every year for the next ten years to put it on its feet” (lv). Not learning from mistakes. In Iraq, we didn’t learn from the mistakes in Afghanistan. More is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. ..global terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and a drug epidemic on an unprecedented scale. U.S policies and Musharraf’s embrace have turned off the Pakistani people. “Ninety percent of the $10 billion in aid that the United States has provided Pakistan since 9/11 has gone to the military rather than to development" (xl). “Bush became president with no knowledge or interest in the outside world—reflective of the attitude of most Americans at the time.” “Clinton had cherry-picked his way through a whole raft of foreign policy issues” relying on polling data to decide when an intervention “was a good idea.” (xlv) Visiting Washington in Bush’s first term was “an Orwellian experience…an unreal world” of uncritical, gullible complacency on the part of the public and the institutions that are supposed to check the president..."the neocon ideology now focused on keeping the American public in a constant state of fear" (xlix). PART I: 9/11 AND WAR Rashid hosted Hamid Karzai at his home six weeks before 9/11…Karzai’s was being expelled from Pakistan—his visa wasn’t being renewed—under pressure from the ISI at the urging of the Taliban (3). He ended up returning to Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 with a few friends on a motorbike with an old satellite phone [which U.S. and British officials were given the number of, but not the ISI]” (23). He still keeps the satellite phone in his presidential palace (84). [Wonderful brief narrative history of Afghanistan from A.D. 654 when the Arab armies invaded and introduced Islam to the Taliban takeover in the 1990s and Taliban-al Qaeda cooperation] “The Taliban’s success, helped by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia’s ability to lavish massive support to the movement, was largely due to Washington’s silence” (15). Al Qaeda trained 30,000 militants between 1996-2001 and relied on a support base in Pakistan for supplies and means of communication. The ties with Pakistani groups proved “critical to al Qaeda’s survival after 9/11” (16). “First say yes and later say but…” is how Rashid describes Pakistan’s policy towards the United States adopted by Pakistan on September 12, 2001 and maintained for several years. Reagan launches global jihad. “Between 1982 and 1990, the CIA, working with the ISI and Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, funded the training, arrival, and arming of some thirty-give thousand Islamic militants from forty-three Muslim countries in Pakistani madrassas to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. This global jihad launched by Zia and Reagan was to sow the seeds of al Qaeda and turn Pakistan into the world center of jihadism for the next two decades” (38-39). [Summarizes Musharraf’s first years in power prior to September 11, 2001—a good complement to the U.S.-focused pre-9/11 histories.] Cheapest war ever. “It was the cheapest war America was ever to fight” (63). It cost only $3.8 billion by January 2002 (97). In a meeting of Afghanistan experts, Richard Haass coined the term “nation building lite,” which became the U.S. strategy. Bush suggested the UN should lead the effort to conduct “so-called nation building.” Colin Powell reassured that it would not be a large-scale, Marshall Plan-like commitment (74-75). Karzai becomes the guy. After returning to Afghanistan and in touch via satellite phone, the U.S . dropped weapons and supplies on Karzai’s position, which he signaled by lighting fires for two consecutive nights. He was later flown to safety for a few days and George Tenet concluded that he was the person to back after he met with CIA officers. “The Americans had decided to give an unprecedented commitment to Karzai as the only Pashtun fighting the Taliban and a potential leader of the country” (86). Karzai was flown to Kabul on a U.S. military plane on December 13 and inaugurated on December 22, 2001. Sixty people were killed by U.S. airstrikes—the result of bad intelligence—in a convoy on the way to the ceremony, including several of his close friends. Bush promises to stick with Musharraf. After the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif, Musharraf tells Bush $1 billion in aid is not enough and asks for F-16s and a commitment not to push him on democratization. Bush tells him the F-16s will have to wait, but offered the assurance, “You tell your people that the president looked you in the eye and told you that he would stick with you” (86). [The U.S. doesn’t commit enough troops, Taliban prisoners are slaughtered by the Northern Alliance, al Qaeda escapes at Tora Bora. The ISI is reluctant to give up support for the Taliban.] PART II: THE POLITICS OF THE POST-9/11 WORLD During the 1990s, the United States did not see itself as having major strategic interests in region – no reason to pay much attention to Kashmir (109). Yet, the Kashmir issue had implications for U.S. policy after 9/11 because Pakistan “viewed its Afghan policy through the prism of denying India any advantage in Kabul” (110). Misfiring on militants. Musharraf used brinksmanship and support of the Kashmir militants to bring India to the negotiating table, but the strategy backfired at home and abroad. “The Pakistani army never understood what was obvious to liberal Pakistanis—that after 9/11 the international community would have zero tolerance for Islamic extremism and that the ISI’s backing of militant groups would have to cease, not just in Afghanistan, but also in Kashmir” (115). With an eye on Iraq, U.S. institutionalizes the warlord system. During and after the initial stages of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the CIA spent $1 billion funding warlords (136). The warlords quickly filled the vacuum of state institutions, and their continued hold on power across the country greatly weakened President Karzai. The United States could have worked to supplement Karzai's power, a longer and slower process, but it was focused on preparing for the Iraq war. It rejected committing the necessary effort (129). Notes on Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos Part III, IV and Conclusion by Vanessa Kulick "Bush promised a great transformation in 2001, and he has certainly transformed the world...we now all have to live with the consequences, pick up the pieces, and help improve the world we are left with by tilting the earth's axis back to where it should be." Part III: The Failure of Nation-building Chapter Nine: Afghanistan I: Economic Reconstruction

• The Neocon’s had no interest in reconstruction before or after the war in Afghanistan; there was no arm of government dedicated to nation-building—stability and reconstruction
  • USAID not equipped with knowledge of Afghanistan’s language and culture
  • DOD and CIA focused strategy on capturing Bin Laden not on rebuilding
  • Contracted out Americans most important humanitarian response since the Marshall Plan
  • No connection between donors providing local government capacity and the services
• Needed development enough to pull country out of cycle of civil war and violence; could have been a natural trading hub (position, resources)

Chapter Ten: Afghanistan II: Rebuilding Security

• Lack of security presence a problem, needed to do nation and state building simultaneously
  • Autonomous PRTs were a problem
    • Lack of money
    • Lacked trained Afghan administrators (Karzai’s fault)
    • Unable to mediate “green on green” (Afghan to Afghan conflicts)
    • Short tours of inexperienced army/reserve soldiers
  • Army training—good: ethnic balance to a degree but continued training militants. Today’s challenge is sustaining the army, and this will have to be funded for a long time
  • Germany and Italy did a pathetic job training the police and creating a justice system, respectively.
  • DDR—UN disarmament, not supported by the U.S. (because militants’ still on CIA’s payroll)
• Constitution (most modern in Muslim world), Lower house: Wolesi Jirga—House of People, Upper house: Meshrano Jirga—House of Elders

Chapter Eleven: Double Dealing with Islamic Extremism: Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan

• Continuation of U.S. policies since 1950s in dealing with military dictators
• Three pillars of military’s national security: 1) India, hegemony and promoting Kashmir cause, 2) protect/develop nuclear program, 3) increase pro-Pakistan government in Afghanistan
• The three pillars above relied on support from Islamic parties, so why would they just put them down?
• Islamic/militant groups
  • Hizb-e-Islami Party (arrived from exile in Iran) located in the NWFP (HQ near Peshawar)—Jalaluddin Haqqani, in charge of North Waziristan
  • Islamic Movement of Uzbek (IMU) located in South Waziristan
  • Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam: main Islamic party in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan and key supporter of the Taliban—most ideological Islamic party with close links to the ISI and army
  • Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) Alliance of five Islamic parties, do not acknowledge 9/11 or terrorism
  • Two main Sunni extremist groups: Sipah-e-Sahaba (soldiers of the companions of the Prophet); Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (army of Jhangvi)
• Pakistan’s military policy was to protect the Taliban and handover al Qaeda and non-Afghans to the United States. It became too difficult working within a two-track policy (helping the Taliban and the United States), so a new clandestine organization was set in the civilian sphere—former ISI trainers of the Taliban, members of the Frontier Corps—created in an undercover setting.
• Reports of ISI collusion: picking up and delivering the Taliban at the borders, providing equipment and training. Until 2006 the United States ignored the Baluchistan Taliban. In 2005, NATO found that the United States had not monitored Taliban activity in four southern provinces in Afghanistan—Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgant, and Nimroz
• May 2003: approx. 5,000 militants in FATA
• Attacks on Musharraf revealed reality of internal Pakistan links to militants and the military’s inability to control the militants
• The United States did not pressure Musharraf, instead increased resources to the ISI and army and in 2002 granted Pakistan a non-NATO ally with $700 million in aid and $364 earmarked for military; but inadequate money for social structure reform
  • School text books an issue—political manifestos
  • 12,000 madrassas, reforms issued but not implemented
  • Out of a total $1.1 billion in donations by Pakistanis’ to charities (zakat), 94% went to religious institutions
• Amidst increasing attacks, Bush said nothing and continued to support Musharraf while he increasingly clung to his own bolstering of presidential power

Chapter Twelve: Taliban Resurgent: The Taliban Return Home

• Pakistan state machinery available to Taliban
  • In 2001 the Pakistan military welcomed back thousands of Taliban across the border: from 2001-2006 not a single Taliban leader was handed over by Pakistan to the United States
  • The lack of U.S. presence in Afghanistan convinced Pakistan to keep control of the Taliban because thought the U.S. would leave. “The CIA wanted Arabs not Afghans.”
  • In 2002 Mullah Omar went into Quetta where he was helped by the ISI and JUI (in charge of government in Quetta), he organized commanders for four southern provinces in Afghanistan, including Mullah Dadullah and Jalaluddin Haqqani
  • • Jalaluddin Haqqani: Leader of the Taliban front based in Miramshah, Pakistan, was helped by the ISI to establish a Taliban base and help al Qaeda
  • Weapons and food were taken to Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2002, and through their base in Pakistan were able to increase their funds through Pakistan and Muslim networks.
  • Karzai would give a list of Taliban leaders in Peshawar to Musharraf and it would be ignored, accompanied by Washington’s silence.
• While the United States declared victory, Taliban attacks increased in Afghanistan while NGOs began leaving due to the escalated violence.
• In the summer of 2003 the large parts of the NWFP and FATA was virtually handed over to the Taliban  increased training of boys/people there  the rebirth of the Taliban
• The Taliban had no new recruitment mechanism, just “rid foreigners” and it took several years of failed U.S. and Afghan polices for them to really gain that recruitment momentum.
• The U.S. remained complacent about the Taliban as long as Pakistan continued to chase al Qaeda.
• Elections:
  • Most NGOs and international community wanted the elections postponed until Afghanistan was ready but the U.S. wanted the job done so they could move out (focus on Iraq)
  • UNAMA (UN Mission to Afghanistan) pushed for Pakistan to do more for elections, Khalilzad got Bush to pressure Musharraf (the first time U.S. showed focus on the Taliban) --> Pakistan deployed troops on the Baluchistan border

Part Four: Descent into Chaos Chapter Thirteen: Al Qaeda’s Bolt-Hole: Pakistan’s Tribal Areas

• FATA—a multilayered terrorist cake:
  • Top: Arabs’ ring around bin Laden
  • Middle Top: militants from Central Asia, Chechnya, Africa, China, and Kashmir
  • Middle Bottom: Afghanistan Taliban settled post-9/11
  • Bottom: Pakistan Pashtun tribes (soon to be Taliban) who provide hideouts and logistics for Taliban
• 2002-2004 Pakistan military did nothing to stop extremists build their bases
• By March 2004, Pakistan military began to see they might not have control
• There was an inability to integrate FATA and a marginalization of the people with a lack of political choice or freedoms.
  • U.S. $750 million aid package to FATA but on false premise (by the Pakistan government) and the U.S. never pushed for reform
  • Taliban sympathies resulted from the Pentagon’s treatment of FATA as a warzone --> increase in attacks --> furor by Tribesman
• Attack on Madrassas
  • Political officers replaced by military leaders who didn’t know the area and thus Musharraf cut the only dialogue he could have had --> Taliban upped antics and harsh code
• U.S. attacks increased with out Pakistan’s permission --> questions of sovereignty --> increased suicide attacks
• Attacks put pressure on Musharraf --> peace talks with seven tribal leaders, but no means to punish --> attacks increased 3 xs since peace deal in 2006.
• U.S. spent $57 million on pay out to informants but no leads on bin Laden
• Musharraf ignored Baluchistan and the insurgency

Chapter Fourteen: America Shows the Way: The Disappeared and the Rendered

• Lack of POW access to justice was a HUGE step back for the U.S., war on terror rejected rules of war --> hampered Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asian countries’ struggle for democracy. Western led nation-building had little credibility if denied justice to the people it was supposed to be helping.
• Bush and the neocon’s acted as if the atrocity of 9/11 warranted the removal of justice and justified their drastic impulses, i.e.
  • Creation of “illegal enemy combatants” bypassed international (Geneva Convention), with no guidelines there was no way to know you’ve gone too far
  • By 2005 the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission logged 800 cases of abuses against Afghan prisoners
• Reliance on private contractors showed the U.S. military’s lack of preparedness: lack of military oversight but the contractor’s had substantial amounts of power
• Rendition: other countries/allies followed suit, Afghanistan, Pakistan
• Afghanistan
  • Afghan government became undermined by the CIA using it and warlords to run secret prisons holding rendered prisoners
  • National Directorate of Security (NDS)—controlled by Northern Alliance (NA), accused of massive torture of prisoners
• Pakistan
  • ISI was anxious to keep captured militants away from the U.S. interrogators (because of ISI training/assistance of Taliban)
  • Musharraf imposed anti-terrorism laws and 7,000 – 10,000 held in jails: as Supreme Court took up cases of abuse, Chaudhry suspended
• Uzbekistan
  • President Islam Karimov was one of the worst human rights offenders ever and he allied with Washington post 9/11
  • Uzbek’s became main jailer for CIA rendition suspects, but amidst international pressure Washington rolled back cozy relations
• Washington/Guantanamo Bay
  • 50,000 people held in detention since 2001

Chapter Fifteen: Drugs and Thugs: Opium Fuels the Insurgency

• Opium produced because consumed by Westerners not Afghans, and if not produced then there would be an uprising against the Taliban
• Drug trafficking supplanted government structure
• When U.S. invaded they didn’t target drug producers because they were the NA allies with the CIA.
• Once poppy production was a recognized problem by the U.S., developing alternative crops and livelihoods was never a serious part of U.S. policy, the debate circled around aerial or ground eradication.
• Karzai and Kabul shared blame for failing to target traffickers (political and familial ties to traffickers); drug money played a major role in the 2006 parliamentary elections
• Helmand responsible for 50% percent of the crop; the U.S. and European countries are spending an average of one billion/year on counter-narcotics but effect in south is negligible
• U.S. and NATO forces failed to develop a coherent interdiction or eradication strategy—concentrating on most visible but least effective approach, forcible crop eradication
• Afghan drug trade sucking in neighbors, Central Asia, Iran, Pakistan
• Elections
  • Drug money played big role in parliamentary elections
  • Karzai wouldn’t accept a party-list system and continued to woo Taliban
  • Drug money was more potent in wooing voters than manifestos
  • Almost all the former Mujahedin warlords stood for reelection
  • Right before elections Rumsfeld announced the U.S. would withdraw 3,000 – 4,000 troops from Afghanistan in early 2006, in the midst of the Taliban insurgency and elections, leaving Afghans feeling deserted.
• Summer 2005, the Taliban tried to win back the southern provinces with suicide attacks, stepped up battles, ambushes, roadside bombs, assassination of aid workers --> insecurity. Al Qaeda helped Taliban reorganize as ISI allowed Taliban commanders to rearm and recruit fighters in Pakistan.

Chapter Sixteen: Who Lost Uzbekistan? Tyranny in Central Asia

• Central Asia dramatically affected by Afghanistan turmoil
• Kyrgyzstan
  • Very poor and economically unstable with deeply polarized population (rich new elite and poor; Kyrgyz versus Uzbek)
  • President Akayev’s decade in power yielded political corruption and popular opposition  rigged referendum
  • Post-9/11, its army had military exercises with the U.S. and allowed U.S. and NATO forces to operate out of one of its air force bases
  • Lawlessness, political assassinations, nepotism increased, Akayev blamed the West  Tulip Revolution in Jan 2005: opposition protests at parliamentary elections  Akayev fled
  • New interim president declared, U.S. base renegotiated; Rumsfeld threw $50 million at the problem
• Turkmenistan
  • President Saparmurat Niyazov died in 2006 after twenty-one years in power, left the country impoverished and back into the Middle Ages: closing theaters, libraries, reducing public access to healthcare, education, and travel abroad
  • His successor Gurbanguly Berdykmukhamedow brought no reforms
• Uzbekistan
  • Major crisis: President Islam Karimov refused to open the country after end of war in Afghanistan, despite U.S. military presence and massive aid. The regime became more oppressive and restrictive, crippled the economy
  • Suicide strikes prompted a crackdown  NGOs forced to leave, mass arrests
  • Massacre
  • • Men stormed a jail to free traders and businessmen belonging to an Islamic group
  • • Thousands of protestors gathered to hear the freed men’s stories
  • • Security forces flew in killing up to 1,500 unarmed civilians and covered up the incident
  • Karimov courted Russia; Russia and China supported Karimov
  • Rice stepped up pressure and U.S. ousted
• CIA became dependent on Uzbekistan’s security services for handling rendered prisoners and the Pentagon directed 80% of aid to military rather than economic development, treating the country as a dumping ground for rendered prisoners and logistics base for Afghanistan

Chapter Seventeen: The Taliban Offensive: Battling for Control of Afghanistan, 2006 –2007

• NATO
  • Unprepared to go to Afghanistan with no standing army or ready to go equipment or aircraft, no central budget, deployments paid for by individual countries;
  • Needed heavy airlift, special training, large numbers of helicopters, culturally sensitized groups but European governments had chronically under spent on their military budgets since the end of the cold war
  • Could not find troops for Afghanistan: European countries got support from parliaments and people by promising their troops would carry out risk free peacekeeping and reconstruction – no mention of possibility of war or counterinsurgency with Taliban  caveats: restrictions on what troops could and couldn’t do.
  • Set ambitious goals and couldn’t meet deadlines
    • Phase One: four phase expansion across Afghanistan
    • Phase Two: NATO deploy to Herat and western Afghanistan after setting up new PRTs
    • Phase Three & Four: deploy to turbulent south and east
  • After 40,000 troops deployed on ground around the country and a full scale Taliban offensive erupted, the NATO mandate continued to be the maintenance of security in the interest of reconstruction and humanitarian efforts
  • NATO in the south had no articulated counterinsurgency.
    • The battles in Helmand provided NATO with incontrovertible evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in backing the Taliban  growing furor at Pakistan
    • NATO's unwillingness to take causalities forced it to depend on the air power it chided American’s for using  civilian causalities fueled Taliban
  • NATO arrived with little understanding of the Afghan conflict, a lack or realism regarding public opposition at home, a complete lack of transparency in dealing with the public, inability to integrate civil and military objectives, and over reliance on U.S. leadership and analysis of the conflict.
• United States
  • Bogged down in Iraq and needed NATO to step up responsibility in Afghanistan --> U.S. troop reduction --> NATO-ISAF
  • In 2005 took over training of police from Germany
• The Afghanistan Compact with the Afghan government (committing international development funding with mutually agreed upon deadlines and targeted) was another list of unfulfilled promises to the Afghans.
• Heavy fighting in the south, the widespread publicized deaths of civilians and a new refugee crisis as families fled war zone caused gloom over Kabul.
• Taliban offensive
  • provided semblance of governing authority in the south with “justice on the spot” Sharia law
  • aimed at capturing Kandahar city: put out tons of men conducting suicide bombings, ambushes, attacks --> insecurity in the area
• Karzai:
  • Some violence was tribal, factional, and drug-related: Karzai failed to put a stop to the corruption and rejected the institutions the UN was trying to build
  • He saw good governance as a projection of powerful tribal personalities rather than the building of institutions

Conclusion:

• Summary of last year in Pakistan and highlight of the deteriorating situation and the Pakistan military’s realization that it was now fighting a civil war with the extremists.
• Pakistan’s situation distracted Washington but didn’t hide the equally bad situation in Afghanistan  Eikenberry in Feb 2007: “reconstituted enemy” and “growing narcotics trafficking” could lead to “the loss of legitimacy of the government of Afghanistan.” First one to publically admit the U.S. had to address the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.
• In 2007 the Taliban and al Qaeda turned their face to Pakistan in response to the government’s crackdown under pressure from Washington.
• NATO had no overarching strategy for winning or for transforming military victories into development, reconstruction, good governance, and political strategies.
• The Taliban are winning by default.
• Today, seven years after 9/11, Mullah Omar and the original Afghan Taliban Shura still live in Baluchistan province. Afghan and Pakistani Taliban live on farther north, in FATA, as do the militants of Jalaluddin Haaqqani; al Qaeda has a safe haven in FATA with groups expanding their reach into Europe and the United States.
• U.S. and NATO failed to understand the Taliban belong to neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan but are a lumpen population: product of refugee camps, militarized madrassas, and the lack of opportunities in the borderland of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• It is going to take a generation before the world sees America in a different light: the wars bled populations and worsened humanitarian crises for neighboring countries.
• The region of South and Central Asia will not see stabilization until there is a new global impact among leading players to help the region resolve its problems. Approach the region holistically rather than in a piecemeal fashion.
• The Pakistan army has to end its notion of a centralized state based on defense against India, and an expansionist, Islamist strategic military doctrine carried out at the expense of democracy.
• The Afghan elite need to want to be born again as a nation  evolve a system of governance capable of delivering services to the people, free of tribalism, sectarianism, and corruption.
• Central Asia is a powder keg, especially Uzbekistan and the West needs to become more aware.