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What Next in Afghanistan?
Tuesday, March 12, 2002
Elie Krakowski, Ph.D.,
Thomas Kleine, &
Kenneth Katzman, Ph.D.

Introductions by James Phillips
The Heritage Foundation



Dr. Elie Krakowski:
As we speak, two opposite trends are manifest. One is more positive, where people are paying attention, wanting to do things, wanting to set things right. The other, as we all also know, is in essence the chaos that threatens to return, accompanied by the fighting that we see already occurring among a number of people that the press insists on calling warlords.

Thomas Kleine:
The leader of a newly formed Afghan interim government--does that sound familiar?--was making his rounds on Capitol Hill and in Washington, meeting with the President of the United States and talking about redevelopment and this new government that we were going to see coming to power in Afghanistan. A major international donors conference had been held in 1989, where the West European countries, Japan, and others came together. They all pledged to extend their cooperation and their contributions toward this new revitalized Afghanistan.

Dr. Kenneth Katzman:
Why am I optimistic? There's a debate around town right now. Some say
that Afghans have always fought Afghans; the history of tribal warfare, internecine warfare, factional
warfare, eventually will catch up, and the structure is going to fall apart again and degenerate into
internal warfare. I'm not sure that's going to happen. There are two main reasons.

1. The various factions that would engage in such fighting clearly see right now that the majority of the Afghan people do not want more fighting. And I think that carries tremendous weight, because any warlord, governor, or commander that steps out of line is going to instantly be deemed out of touch with the desires of the Afghan people for peace after more than 20 years of war.
2. The factional leaders realize that they are under an international microscope the likes of which they have never seen before. Everything they do is being very carefully watched, especially by the United States.

(More: The Heritage Foundation News Source)
2002 © The Heritage Foundation.

Dan