Structure in that country and the influence of regional partners like pakistan, china and india. This is 90 mince. Okay. Were going to get started. Im dan rundy, hold the chair at cis. Were here to talk about nonmilitary components of u. S. Strategy in afghanistan. I think the first thing you have to say is i certainly welcome, i think many people welcome the fact President Trump and the Trump Administration has come forward with a new strategy for afghanistan without time lines and doubling down on a commitment to a great cause. The fact there are 3 Million Girls in school, a whole lot at stake in afghanistan, not just our security but moral component as well. Theres a lot of progress that doesnt get a lot of coverage. For us to risk letting that go would be high. Its been a privilege to work with my friend ambassador wayne, who is the former coordinator. Weve done a number of things with ambassador wayne. So weve got a very good to cover the issues today. But the other point i want to make is you cant solve the challenges of afghanistan without diplomacy and development. It requires a security component but the facts on the ground are being changed by diplomacy and development in the private sector. We want to have that part of the conversation. The other thing is, we want to work ourselves out of a job. If afghanistans in a different place than ten or 15 years ago, if you look at the amount of assistance as a size of the gnp of the economy, its much smaller than ten years ago. If you look at afghanistan, its collecting taxes. That means for every dollar theyre collecting in taxes from a formal private sector thats one less dollar of foreign assistance to pay for schools and hospitals, pay for security. We want to see those numbers go up. We want to see Tax Collections go up, we want to see Economic Growth happen. And we want to work ourselves out of a job or work ourselves to a smaller part of the job, lets put it that way. I think that is possible and we need to have an end point and to have a vision for what that looks like. The nonmilitary side is critical to this and thats going to be a critical part of this. Im really pleased my good friend and colleague ramina van doren is going to be moderating the discussion. Shes a new senior fellow here. She comes from Economist Intelligence unit. You have her bio. Its a real privilege to have her with us. Im very grateful that shes going to be moderating this. Im going to introduce abdul sanah to give an afghan perspective on this and hes going to make a few brief remarks and then well turn the panel over to my friend romrona ba bandura. Abdul, please come up. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you, daniel, for the invitation and arranging this timely and important discussion. Ambassador olson, ambassador wayne, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. The afghan synergy announced by president of the United States on july 21st is an important milestone. We welcome the shift to a condition based strategy which means the determination of the presence and number of troops will depend on the ground realities in afghanistan. While we welcome this announcement, the goal in afghanistan is aggressively pursuing anticorruption measures, peace and reconciliation efforts. We believe in the fact that military is not the only solution to the afghan problem. Economic development, good government, reforms, tackling corruption, education of narcotics, peace and reconciliation and Regional Cooperation are vital steps toward achieving lasting stability. The government of afghanistan is committed to reforms and addressing these internal challenges. We just signed our commitment to implementing a compact with the United States which is aimed at prioritizing the existing commitment of the government of afghanistan. And measuring achievements against a set of benchmarks in a number of core areas. Representatives of the two countries will meet regularly to ascertain whether the bench marks are established according to the established timelines. The compact will cover four critical areas including economy, security, good governments and peace and reconciliation. Significant reforms in areas of business, climate, Financial Sector and primary sector are under way. Were also committed to providing the necessary hard infrastructure for trade and investment to take place including primarily power and transport and telecoms. Afghanistan is pursuing a selfreliance agenda with absolute determination and is committed to improving Government Services and effectiveness, rule of law and control of corruption. In regards to peace and reconciliation, afghanistan is trying to promote bilateral, try trilateral and multilateral mechanisms for regional corruption. The process is an important platform in this direction. Our National Peace strategy calls for direct outreach in support of peace and reconciliation. We believe that with the proper support of the International Community, we will have significant progress in these areas. I would like to end on the note that afghanistan is moving forward and the people of afghanistan are committed to owning their future. I just had to make it short because i was told that i have only four minutes. Thank you very much. [ applause ] thank you very much. Now were going to im going to introduce the distinguished panel. Its a pleasure to be here. Im Romina Bandura and im a senior fellow at csis. Im joined by ambassador tony wayne. Hes coordinating director for development and Economic Affairs for the u. S. Embassy in kabul, afghanistan. Also mr. Earl gast, hes the Mission Director in afghanistan for usaid, Ambassador Richard olson, former u. S. Ambassador to pakistan and special representative of afghanistan and pakistan and mr. Jeffrey grieco, president and ceo of the Afghan American Chamber of commerce. So im going to begin asking two questions about the past and so one of the main issues is whats different in afghanistan since september 11th . The second question im an economist, i like data, so the second question to the panelists would be what are some key achievements, some key data points that you could talk about since, you know, september 11th that have been a success and that we can show progress in afghanistan . So those are two questions about the past and then ill ask two questions about the future strategy and about the future of afghanistan. Okay. Thank you. I think as a former assistant administrator, i think the investments we made from 2002 onward were building the social structure of afghanistan. So we focused on building schools, getting curriculum design, getting girls in school, building clinics, local Community Based clinics, establishing midwife systems and all of that early Infrastructure Investment took afghanistan, Maternal Death rates 289 to 111, and now 110. Thats dramatic progress. It usually takes 30 years to see that effect. Schools, we have i think 80 of the girls now in school. Its taken a little bit of a fall back. The last six or seven years. There are more schools built, perhaps too many schools in some cases because conflict zones overtook the schools that we had constructed with the afghan community. So i think education and social progress and health care has taken dramatic steps forward. Other steps, economic steps are really important to know. They have acceded to the wto and theyre working very hard to comply with all the requirements that a typical state has to do and with very little capacity in their own ministries to do that. Its been hard. Theyre working through it. Very diligently with great support from the Donor Community. Their revenue collections in the last few years have started to tick up. Domestic resource mobilization is now improving. I think thats a very big credit to president ghani. Hes the one who is really focused on trying to improve domestic resource mobilization. Their fiscal state is okay but i qualify that because the imf is in a workout with afghanistan. Their fiscal state better be okay if were in a workout situation. Subregional growth. Both within afghanistan there are big pockets of very strong private sector led, marketled growth going on. H halat, jalalabad. Other areas that i think is a real model kabul, i dont like to throw in there as an automatic, because kabul is the center of government. Theres naturally more investment and trade going on there with institutions. The president is moving now aggressively to integrate the country into the regional economy. Theres a whole bunch of announcements that theyve made. They have a direct rail service from china coming into northern afghanistan. There is now direct flights, cargo flights happening now every three weeks between kabul into india. Thats a new agreement that the president had signed. Thats positive and if im hearing from the government officials, its going to be speeding up and youll see more of that and last is road integration. A lot of roads being built. In the south which is going to give them access into a freeport area for exports is also critical. Last is ict is a very positive thing. Its taken too long for the president and the government to move forward on liberalizing the ict industry sector. That means theyre going to have a spectrum allocation for 4g, finally. It should have been happened two years ago and theres been a lot of resistance to it. He did announce an open access policy which got put up on the website finally last month or so. Youll see now Big Investments coming in and Telecom Sector which early on in afghanistan, with the help of u. S. Department of defense, who helped go in and build a lot of that infrastructure, that was a driver of a lot of the private sector growth early on. Now its shifting to a private sectorled effort without any usg involvement in it. Thank you and jeff, i wont repeat the accomplishments that youve cited. Let me say, yes, the u. S. Government was the main donor during that time but it was also, if you will consortium of donors from all over the world contributing to the foundational investments, if you will, in afghanistan at an early stage. Most people use 2002 as the reference point, and so we see a lot of progress. Weve seen a lot of progress from 2002, probably until the time that i served with ambassador wayne in afghanistan. I was there during the surge from 2010 to 2011. But i would also say that since that point progress has been more incremental if you will, slower, of course. And so even though there are a lot of good things to cite, as jeff has done, with regard to education and with regard to health and with regard to the economy, i think the point that we the major crisis that we were looking at during a period of 2010, 2011 was the actual transition and the effect that the transition would have on afghanistans governance as well as its economy. Imagine more than 100,000 troops propping up the economy, and then in a short period of time a rapid scaling down of the troops. And i would say that it appears that afghanistan has weathered the worst of it, that it is hit bottom, perhaps a year and a half ago, and the economy is beginning to rebound and thats good. It reflects some of the important things that the government is doing with regard to the economy putting into place ppp law, National Procurement law. The president himself is very much engaged in running the economy as a former world bank person economist would do. He also was very much involved with ambassador wayne and me in shaping the Assistance Programs. Let me just contrast the Assistance Program from back then to now. I would say at that point there was little government capacity, and we were overwhelming the government and the country with aid dollars. So there were a lot of parallel structures. What the government has done now is try to bring in both governments, the u. S. Government as well as the Afghan Government, bringing more assistance on the books of the government so that its a coordinated process and the government is in the lead. I can say from my experience now, i serve as a Senior Vice President for creative associates, weve been involved in basic education in afghanistan for more than ten years and weve seen phenomenal progress along the way, but one thing that doesnt make it into the headlines is really the capacity of the government in the ministry of education and the government actually taking the lead. So were often told by the government slow down, were in charge, were not ready to move to this district or that district. And of course, we follow the government. So its an Assistance Program that is much more aligned with the government. I did say that, you know that it does appear that the bottoming out has taken place and the economy is on the incline, but the biggest concern obviously is security, and im sure will talk about that throughout this session but when we see the number or percentage of districts under government control declining, that is not a good signal to investors. And so there are other parts of the world where in a insecure environment well see investment come in but its not coming in in afghanistan for myriad of reasons. But on that, because investment isnt coming in, the economy is growing at a slow pace. The biggest concern that i have as i look at afghanistan is the demographics. It has the Third Largest youth bulge in the world. 65 of the population is under the age of 25. That could be either the youth curse or the youth dividend. Unfortunately right now its probably more toward the former rather than the latter. The problem is the economy is not growing quickly enough to absorb all those who are seeking jobs. 400,000 new job seekers a year come out of the University System or the High School System looking for jobs and the jobs arent there. And we do know that the sense of a lack of a future to include a lack of a job is one of the reasons that insecurity is being fuelled. The main difference for us as americans is obviously there have been no attacks against our homeland since 9 11. I think that in particular what is striking is just as the economy has begun to rebound after the big transition in 2014, it is also the case that the security situation has held steadier than many might have expected. The fact is after the end of combat operations the end of 2014, the taliban and other insurgents threw everything they had at the Afghan Government and Coalition Forces and have not been able to actually seize and hold for any period of time any provincial capitals. The latest numbers suggest that the documegovernment retains co of territory that accounts for 21. 4 afghans. Whereas the taliban is in control of territory that probably holds 2 to 3 million afghans. What the taliban is doing is getting great areas of control over deserts and mountains and the cities, the urban centers continue to be under government control. Kabul was the city of 200,000 in 2001. It is now a city in the millions. I dont think anyone knows exactly how many people, 4 to 5 million is the usual estimate. Most of those people are young and theyre connected to the outside world by telecoms in a way that has not happened ever in afghan history. Afghanistan is a very different place. It is much more urbanized and not withstanding its very low level of development, its much more connected to the outside world than it ever has been in the past. I think we need to be thinking about this in terms the conflict in terms of a rural traditionalist element versus an urban element. This is an old conflict. This goes back when tony and i were talking about whether it goes back 40 years or 100 years or longer, you could even go back to the 11th century, but it does seem to me that the weight of demographics is very much on the side of what i think all of us in this room would see as progress. So my colleagues have laid out many of the achievements and some of the difficulties that we still face along the way. I think it is fair to remember that the reason we went so intensely into afghanistan or terrorists reaching out of afghanistan in to the United States, and the reason why we are still in afghanistan and are going to stay has to do with that potential terrorist threat and if you look at the broader region and afghanistan and its neighbors, there are still a lot of radicals and terrorism terrorists in that area and there is a real possibility that if the United States were to leave, more chaos would return to that space. So then within that context, its also important to remember that we really didnt understand the scope and complexity of the challenges we were taking on when we went into afghanistan. And the United States and its allies have been learning along the way. Theyve been working with afghan partners and allies who also have been learning along the way that are a mix of modernizers and traditionalists and theyre different places on that spectrum and then in many ways weve been telescoping the process of building a more modern state in society into a period of time that it would be hard to find another nation where this is has taken place. Its not surprising that theres a lot of challenges. Theres the regional rivalries which continue to complicate the situation in this part of the world. So its really a complex set of challenges. As the u. S. Government, i think weve learned a lot along the way. As a coalition of partners and allies weve learned a lot along the way and one of the things weve learned is if were going to succeed, there are a number of very important paths of action, lines of action and those need to be coordinated. They need to be