The Canadian knowledge network for advancing governance leadership, Governance Village published an interview with Ambassador Jawed Ludin on their website on May 13th, 2008. Here, Mr. Ludin speaks about the development process in Afghanistan in the last five years.
Afghanistan making historical progress
When he returned to his native Afghanistan in 2003, Jawed Ludin came back to a country devastated by almost 25 consecutive years of armed conflict. A third of the population had fled, women were shut out of public life and social services were virtually non-existent. The political vacuum created by the American-led ousting of the Taliban had been filled by warlords and the presumptive government - Hamid Karzai's Interim Authority - had little control outside the capital, Kabul.
By Brandon Currie, GV Content Editor
"You can hardly imagine a more miserable situation than that," the 35-year-old Ludin lamented in an interview prior to his talk at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) on May 6. When he arrived for his first day of work as communications director for Karzai's administration, he found his year-old prefab office padlocked and, once he broke in, filled with filthy office furniture and electronics. All of his 17 staffers - many of whom only existed on paper - were computer illiterate. "In a symbolic way, [the disorganization] reflected the state of Afghanistan's administration. It did not have any capacity," Ludin explains.
Five years on, Ludin - now the Afghan ambassador to Norway - describes a far different scenario. "The changes in Afghanistan over last 5 years have been historical," he told an audience of around 100 people at CIGI, including a group of Afghan-Canadians and family members of Canadian forces. "It would be a mistake to consider Afghanistan today as a standard case of humanitarian intervention. It's no longer a charity case."
"The government today is incomparably better... It took president Karzai years - literally, years - and a lot of effort and sweat and toil and tears to reverse [warlordism] and expand the authority of the legitimate central government over the autonomous regions. Today it's perfectly fine. But it's taken a long time.
"What we see today is a national constitution which forms the basis for a new young democracy with an elected government, independent judiciary, freedom of the media, women fully participating in public life... 28 percent of our parliament is female, which is a massive achievement even by [Canadian] standards."
According to Ludin, even though the government in Kabul has also vastly improved social indicators like health and education, the security situation in the south of the country remains treacherous - as Canadians are well aware. To the young ambassador, it's the biggest challenge facing his equally young regime.
"It was easy to drive out the Taliban because it wasn't a party; it wasn't a regime; it wasn't a political force. It was just a layer of superficially-imposed government on a totally helpless population," he explains, "But we Afghans had a fear that their departure might create a vacuum. And I think to some extent that happened. It's not that I was against military action per se, but it has to be combined with a political process. Because in 2001, the political vacuum was filled by warlords."
Though some may disagree with Ludin's assertion that the central government's control over the provinces is "perfectly fine," he argues that the growing strength of the regime in Kabul has been a mitigating factor against insurgents. "We have to remember that terrorism is not strong. Their biggest strength lies where we're perceived to be weak. Villagers from the south used to come to meet with the president, and I remember one message very clearly: ‘The Taliban and the terrorists are not strong. You are weak.' And this applies internationally. We must not be weak."
And helping Afghanistan regain strength, Ludin says, has been the stabilizing presence of Canadian forces and other troops in NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). "[Canada] has played an exemplary role. The people of Canada may never fully realize the significance of your role in Afghanistan... I am deeply humbled by the sacrifices of your soldiers. Although I don't wish to interfere in your internal politics, we deeply appreciate the courage of leaders like Prime Minister Harper who are prepared to take political risks at this juncture in history."
After fielding a number of questions from Afghan-Canadians following his talk, the ambassador had the opportunity to hear from family members who had loved ones stationed in Kandahar province. One mother, who has a son home on leave from Panjwaii district - the notorious birthplace of the Taliban - voiced concerns over the potential erosion of Afghans' civil liberties but agreed with Ludin that the overall situation called for cautious optimism:
"I was speaking to my son who is home on leave from Afghanistan, and he was talking about the Panjwaii district where he had been in 2006. When he went back he was very pleased to see evidence of progress: people were out and about, everything just looked better; lovely and green - though it might have been poppies. But it's certainly developing, he said."
Read the interview in its original context here:
http://www.governancevillage.org/blogs/gvnewsblog/afghanista
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