Local man observes progress in Afghanistan first handDate: 4/11/2012 April 11, 2012
By G. Michael Dobbs
news@thereminder.com
For Ken Furst, the offer made by Ambassador Ryan Crocker was a deal too good to pass up: come to Afghanistan for a week, meet with a broad cross section of Afghans and draw your own conclusions about the status of that nation and the involvement of troops from the United States and other countries.
His conclusion is that Afghans are concerned that international troops will leave before a domestic security force is strong enough to withstand further attacks from Taliban fighters in spite of a series of well-publicized incidents that have cast American troops in a bad light.
The Wilbraham resident, who is a board member of the World Affairs Council of Western Massachusetts and is the president of the Momentum Group, spent seven days in Afghanistan, just returning last week. He accompanied five other members of the World Affairs Council from around the country in a trip sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
Furst explained to Reminder Publications that Crocker wanted the delegation to "find out what was going on and come back and report." He said the ambassador chose the World Affairs Council as the vehicle for recruiting people for the trip because it is the "premiere grassroots citizen diplomacy organization in the country." There are 92 local councils across the nation, he added.
Representing the local council on a trip to a foreign country wasn't something new for Furst as he had been on such a trip to Taiwan in 2004.
Furst wasn't too worried about traveling to a country undergoing a war.
"I wasn't overly concerned about safety," he said. "I was confident that Ambassador Crocker would have pulled the plug if we weren't going to be OK. There's not a lot of war going on in Kabul [the capitol city]."
Furst had watched news reports and read about Afghanistan prior to the trip and he admitted that if he had a preconceived "slant" on the subject it was whether or not America was "bogged down" in a foreign conflict and how could the nation get out.
The World Affairs Council group lived at the American Embassy compound and was accompanied by security forces wherever they went in Kabul. The photos Furst took show a city that has clearly been the location of conflict for many years and is attempting to rebuild.
He saw no working traffic lights in the city, but despite a challenging mix of pedestrians and vehicles, he also saw no accidents.
Over the course of conversations with Afghans, the incidents ranging from photographs of American troops urinating on the bodies of enemy fighters to the accidental burning of the Quran to the mass murder of 17 Afghan civilians allegedly by an American soldier did come up. Furst said, "[The incidents] definitely tainted the feelings over there and we heard that."
He emphasized, "In spite of those [incidents] the Afghans don't want us to leave precipitously."
The delegation spoke to five different government ministers, members of the Afghan parliament, high school and university students, an opposition leader, a Mujahedeen leader and people representing cultural, business and educational organizations.
The group also had a very rare meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and spoke with Lt. Gen. John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force.
Under the current plan, international troops would be phased out of Afghanistan by 2014. Furst said there has been pressure on Congress to demand an acceleration of that timetable, but the Afghans the group spoke with believes any faster would put the nation in a "vulnerable spot."
Furst said, on the basis of what he saw, there has been "tremendous progress in Afghanistan since 2001." He noted the nation of 30 million people there were about 900,000 college students in 2001 and all of them male. Now there are four million students and about 40 percent of them are female.
"That's a huge change and they do appreciate it," he said.
There has been additional progress in the rights of women, he added. Under the Taliban regime, there were no women in government and now a woman heads at least one ministry.
Afghanistan's economy has also changed. Furst and his group met with officials in charge of the country's mines and agriculture. He said that something as simple as a developing a storage facility for potatoes is helping the nation's farmers.
Switching to a crop that would raise as much money for farmers as heroin poppies is an on-going concern for the government, but Furst said the land-locked country doesn't have direct access to a port, which affects exporting.
Three of the neighboring countries have rail service that could transport products, but the lines are of three different gauges, making transportation more difficult, he explained.
Another obstacle facing continual economic growth is corruption. "Everyone mentioned it, including Karzai," Furst said.
The head of the Ministry of Mines explained to Furst that there had been 14 different bank accounts associated with the ministry. They were recently closed and a new, more transparent accounting system was put in place.
Banking has also been an enterprise riddled with corruption and Furst mentioned that the near collapse of the nation's largest bank, the Kabul Bank — that included the involvement of Karzai's brother Mahmoud — has resulted in new financial rules and methods of transparency.
The group met the president of the country in his office. Some people have criticized Karzai for having little power or influence outside of Kabul. While Furst wasn't sure, based on what he had seen of Karzai's range of influence, he disagreed with the accusations that he is " a puppet of the West."
What Furst does believe is that without an established domestic force, Karzai would not stay in power.
Karzai does get some credit for the changes in Afghan society and Furst said the people with whom he spoke appreciate the progress.
Historically, Furst noted Afghanistan has "never had a strong central government."
Furst said that Crocker is currently negotiating the role of American troops will play from 2015 through 2024 as well as economic development issues.
Based on what he saw and heard, Furst believes that without an established domestic security force, the Taliban could take back control of the country and invite back terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.
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