Remarks by James Kunder
Deputy Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Near East
Rebuilding Afghanistan
U.S. Department of State
Foreign Press Center
Washington, D.C.
December 17, 2003
MR. DENIG: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. Today we're having another in our series of briefings on developments in Afghanistan, today specifically on the topic of rebuilding of Afghanistan.
As I think many of you know, just yesterday a very important event took place with the opening of the road between Kandahar and Kabul, the first in a series of road openings. And so we have a briefing dealing with that and the broader issue of rebuilding Afghanistan today, but we'd like to actually start by showing you a brief video clip that provides a little bit more insight into this. So if we could see the video, and then I'll introduce our speaker, thank you.
(Video shown.)
[President Karzai:] "The reconstruction of Afghanistan, the construction of our highway is something asked of me every day, every hour, by the people of Afghanistan, wherever they see me. I'm very grateful today to President Bush for fulfilling very much on time and with insistence with his colleagues the promise that he gave me a year ago."
[Andrew Natsios:] "It's reduced the amount of time it takes to go from these two big cities from 14 hours to five hours. And it's going to allow a lot of women, for example, who would never have made it to hospitals, who were having difficult deliveries, to actually get medical care. It'll allow farmers to bring their crops to market, which they couldn't do before. And it will allow for improved policing and improved ability for security purposes in that sector."
MR. DENIG: Regarding the two individuals who were speaking on the video, the first, of course, was President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. The second person was Andrew Natsios, the Administrator of the Agency for International Development. And we're very pleased today to have with us here in Washington, James Kunder, the Deputy Assistant Administrator for United States Agency for International Development, specifically responsible for Asia and the Near East. He will brief us on the events yesterday as well as on the broader developments in rebuilding Afghanistan.
Jim.
MR. KUNDER: Thank you. You have a briefing packet, so I'll just cover a few of the points on the road construction project, and then take your questions.
When I arrived in Afghanistan in January of last year to reopen the USAID mission, naturally, the first thing that occurred to us is the need to rebuild the transportation infrastructure of Afghanistan. Although we have become accustomed to saying that Afghanistan faced 23 years of war between the time of the Soviet invasion and the departure of the Taliban, it is worth pausing for a moment just to think about the level of destruction that occurred in 23 years.
The transportation infrastructure was almost completely destroyed. The nation had, prior to the 23 years of fighting, a ring road that circled the center of the country, and more than two-thirds of the population lived within 35 kilometers of that ring road. So it was the heart of the transportation and communications infrastructure. When we looked at that road, for example, from Kabul to Kandahar, most of the road was ground to dirt, to powder. There were some small segments where you could still see some pavement with potholes and ruts in the road. But most of the road literally had returned to dirt, so that the transportation between the major cities was incredibly arduous and incredibly expensive. So it seemed to us one of the first tasks was to begin the reconstruction of the road.
President Karzai suggested that the first portion of the road to be constructed should be from Kabul to Kandahar. President Bush made a commitment last year to complete that road. We, at USAID, provided a timeline that said. "We can complete this difficult 389- kilometer section of highway by June of 2004."
President Bush came back to Mr. Natsios and directed him to complete the road by December 31st of 2003. We told the President, "Well, we'll look at whether we can complete it on time." The President said, "Maybe you didn't hear me. I said you will complete it by December 31st."
So we took this as our objective to complete the road by the end of this year, and as you just saw on the clip, the first hard surface has been completed from Kabul to Kandahar. There is now a paved road from one city to the other. We will come back next year to put another layer of paving on the road and to widen the road even further with shoulders on the edges on the road.
We have already begun to meet the second part of President Bush's pledge to President Karzai, which is to extend the road from Kandahar to Herat in the west, along the Iranian border. We've already begun the engineering to complete that road, and the preliminary survey work and preliminary de-mining. It is our goal, by the end of next year, to complete the southern half of the ring road, as President Bush pledged to President Karzai, from Kabul to Kandahar in the south, to Herat in the west. And when I say "we," it is not just the U.S. Government that is contributing to this road -- it is also the Japanese Government and the Saudi Government.
And I should say, in fairness, that also the Afghan Government itself, while it does not have the financial resources, has also made a major commitment. Many of the subcontractors and laborers working on the road are Afghan, and the Afghan Ministry of Interior has provided security forces to assist us in the completion of the road; indeed, more than a dozen such security forces were killed during the completion of the first portion of this road because of attacks along the road.
This particular project was difficult, even by normal developing world construction standards, primarily because of two factors:
Number one, the need to do extensive de-mining along the course of the highway. During the de-mining exercise, hundreds of mines or unexploded ordnance were found along the course of the road, along the edges of the road. So it was a very substantial de-mining task to be done, which was done concurrently with the construction of the road staying ahead of the construction crews.
The second major difficulty in completing the road was that the construction materials, the asphalt had to be hauled, essentially, over the Khyber Pass, primarily from Pakistan, and later from Pakistan through the southern crossing at Quetta and Spin Boldak. But each truckload of asphalt took an arduous route from Pakistan over the Khyber Pass, and along the very roads we're trying to repair to get to the paving machines to lay the asphalt. So there was an enormous supply problem as well.
Due to the hard work of the American engineering firm, Lewis Berger Group, the cooperation of the Afghan authorities and the construction firms, which were from Turkey and India, this team worked together with our Japanese and Saudi partners to complete the road two weeks ahead of schedule?
This is one of several infrastructure projects we're working on in Afghanistan now. For example, we're also meeting the President's pledge to construct 1,000 elementary schools in the next three years, several hundred health clinics, and also 1,000 mile -- 1,000 kilometers -- excuse me -- of rural, secondary roads across the country to link with the major ring road project.
The only other thing I would add to this briefing is that, while we have focused here on bricks and mortar projects, on actual physical reconstruction, clearly, the other part of our reconstruction work is the building of systems and institutions to knit Afghanistan back together.
When visitors come to Afghanistan, the first thing they see is the physical destruction. But after 23 years of war, there was also profound institutional destruction. The army ceased to exist as an institution; the police ceased to exist as an institution; most of the ministries were no longer functioning as modern ministries; the financial system had evaporated. There were no private banks functioning in Afghanistan at the time of the fall of the Taliban.
So what we've been working on behind the scenes is the restructuring of these institutions. For example, we have issued a new currency, the new Afghani, so that we now have a stable, modern currency. When we arrived in Afghanistan, we had several currencies circulating, competing and confusing the monetary picture.
A second thing is the passage of a banking law, so that now we have the opportunity for modern commercial banks to operate in Afghanistan to help the economy recover from 23 years of war. And now the Afghan Ministry of Finance has issued licenses for some private Pakistani and British banks to begin financial transactions in the country.
We have begun rebuilding the media network, both the government and private media networks, to increase the participation in the upcoming political events, like the constitutional Loya Jirga going on now, and next year's elections. We are working at knitting the police and military back together. We are helping the ministries restructure. We are passing a new investment law, or assisting the Afghans in passing a new investment law, because we know that private sector investment -- both Afghan and international -- will be critical to rebuilding the country.
So I guess I'll stop there and take questions, but I wanted to give you a quick briefing on the status of the road project and, more broadly, the reconstruction of the physical infrastructure. But I also want to highlight that behind the scenes equally important work is being done to reconstruct the institutions and systems that were destroyed during the long period of conflict.
Thank you.
MR. DENIG: Thank you, Jim. For questions, as usual, I'd ask you to use the microphone and identify yourself and your news organization.
Let's start with the gentleman up front here.
You can sit down for that. Thank you.
QUESTION: Sir, my name is Sayed Shah, from the Pashto Service of the Voice of America, and I am also filing for (inaudible) service, as well. My question is that, while the Loya Jirga process is going on, and hopefully Afghanistan will enter a new political, social and economic life, this project, the road between Kandahar and Kabul is a very important development. But this morning I interviewed a former minister of the transitional government who lives in Australia now, and he was telling me that if simultaneously some other projects were also undertaken, for example, as you mentioned, and this is road is extended beyond Kandahar to
(ph) Turundi and Islamqallah bordering Iran, and also in eastern Afghanistan, in his view this will alleviate the economic sufferings of the people as well as, it will also undo some anger which is there, you know. So do you plan to undertake similar projects of similar significance in eastern and southern Afghanistan as well or not? Thank you very much.
MR. KUNDER: Thank you for the question. We are working with other major donors, both bilateral and multilateral, to construct the entire ring road system in Afghanistan and the important linkages to Pakistan and Tajikistan and surrounding countries.
I think much of the hope of the Afghan people is that we will have a restored transportation system, both for internal commerce, but also to link to the export markets. So if we look at the map, now -- and this information is available at the USAID website -- if we look at the ring road in the center of the country, some portions of that ring road will be built with Asian Development Bank funding. Some portions toward Jalalabad will be funded with European Commission funding, some parts will be undertaken with World Bank funding, and the United States will continue and meet the President's pledge with Japan and Saudi Arabia to go all the way to Herat so that we will complete the entire southern half.
So yes, there is a plan to look at all of the road network in Afghanistan, and not just the road network, but also the electrical power network and the irrigation network.
I don't want to make things look too good today. There is a lot of work yet to be done. This is a significant milestone, but it is just a beginning on the many infrastructure projects that still need to be done.
MR. DENIG: Let's go to Finland, please.
QUESTION: Yes, Jyri Raivio, newspaper Helisingin Sanomat, Finland. Are you short of money and are the pledges that were given in the donors conference, have they been fulfilled?
MR. KUNDER: This question has been examined repeatedly since the Tokyo conference, now almost two years ago. And essentially, most donors have met their pledges. I think some of the analysis has been, has been made more complicated by the fact that when the original pledges were made by donors in Tokyo, some made one-year pledges, some made multi-year pledges; some made grant pledges, some made loan pledges. But according to data from the Afghan Government itself, most of the donor pledges from Tokyo have been met.
Now, I think the question is how to sustain such commitment. Clearly President Bush wanted to send a signal to the entire international donor community of continued U.S. assistance for Afghanistan, and this is why he proposed this $1 billion increase in reconstruction assistance, of which the Congress has been very supportive. In fact, now the total additional resources being made available either from reprogrammed money or new appropriations from the Congress is $1.6 billion of additional U.S. assistance from now to the end of our fiscal year 2004.
There is discussion of holding an additional donors conference soon, early in 2004. So thus far, we're satisfied that our donor partners have made good on their pledges, and what we hope for now is that we have new commitments on the part of all the donors to continue the reconstruction work that has been begun.
Okay?
QUESTION: There is now a lack of money? Is it sort of hindering or slowing the process?
MR. KUNDER: At this point -- you know, there's always the question of, as we say, absorptive capacity -- how much money can the system take? Right now, I do not believe the reconstruction program is being slowed from lack of money. What I believe is that we will need continued additional pledges of the magnitude of Tokyo to sustain the reconstruction efforts that are going on now.
MR. DENIG: Okay. Let's go to the front row, please.
QUESTION: Raghubir Goyal, India Globe & Asia Today. 25 years ago in the 1980s, Afghans and Afghanistan had everything what other nations today
(inaudible) destroyed by the terrorists or inside enemies of the freedom and peace. Even today everything depends on law and order in the country and also what kind of government the Afghans will have. One, can you describe, sir, that -- how is the law and order situation today and as terrorism is concerned? And what kind of government, presidential or a parliamentary government do you think U.S. favors or what Afghanis want today?
MR. KUNDER: Well, first, you're certainly correct. While Afghanistan was a relatively poor nation by all normal, international development indicators before the fighting started in the late '70s, it did have significant infrastructure. And that infrastructure was very seriously damaged during the war. So this is a reconstruction effort in many, in many ways.
I would be shocked if I were not asked a question about security and the impact on the reconstruction effort. Now, I take security issues very seriously. People who work for me are there working on it, and I don't want them to get killed in the process -- we've had more than a dozen people killed in the Afghans killed along the road. We've had a Pakistani worker killed. We've had an Indian engineer kidnapped. Previously we had two Indian engineers kidnapped. We had previously had a Turkish engineer kidnapped, so clearly there are risks. But I would say this -- especially in the southeastern part of the country. The security risks have been heavily concentrated in the southeast.
In most of the country, given the fact that we've had 23 years of war, given the fact that we're just rebuilding the police structure now, I consider the security risks to be acceptable. I do not believe -- and I've thought long and hard about this -- I do not believe the reconstruction effort is being seriously slowed down by the security threats around the country.
Now, we analyze those every week. There are security threats. But at this point in most of the country -- and I just met with some of my NGO colleagues, and they feel the same way about this -- that reconstruction is going forward. We anticipated some security problems with the roads. It is such a visible symbol of the rebuilding of the country, that those elements that do not wish Afghanistan to be reconstructed, that do not wish it to become a modern state, clearly targeted the road as a symbol of what's being done. And so I consider this a significant victory, not just in the reconstruction effort, but over the terrorists who wanted to stop this effort.
On the question of what form of government, that's a question for the Afghan people. The United States Government, through USAID, provided some technical assistance during the constitutional Loya Jirga process. We provided technical assistance from organizations like the Asia Foundation. And what they brought to the discussion were models from other countries: models of Islamic constitutions -- or constitutions from Islamic countries and other developing-world countries so that the constitution commission could examine these models, see what worked and address issues like the level to which Sharia law should be incorporated into the constitution.
But on these issues like prime minister versus president, or both, what we did was bring models, we brought technical assistance, we offered suggestions and approaches, but ultimately, this is a question, as it should be, for the Afghan people, so I have no opinion on that question.
MR. DENIG: Okay. Let's go back to Finland.
QUESTION: The road being a symbol, as you said, are you concerned there is sabotage against the new fancy road between Kabul and Kandahar?
MR. KUNDER: Am I concerned? Yes, because the construction, as I mentioned, is not completed yet. We will continue the paving once the cold weather breaks. We're doing some work now, but we'll do a heavy, additional layer of paving once springtime comes. So do I anticipate additional security incidents? Yes. Are we preparing for them? Yes. Do we believe it will stop the paving? No.
I regret every person who was killed. I regret every person who was wounded or kidnapped, but when I look at the importance of this project to the Afghan people, it is our intention to provide security as best we can and to continue with the reconstruction work.
MR. DENIG: All right. Let's go to the front row here, please.
QUESTION: Sir, we heard a report from Kabul that for the security of this highway a 700-man strong security force will be trained by Mr. Jalali, the present Interior Minister. And it will be deployed along the way. Did it happen because the latest reports from our local correspondents in the area, they are suggesting that there is no such force. Even the governors in Kandahar and Ghazni and Wardak and provinces, which lie along the road --
MR. KUNDER: Yes.
QUESTION: -- they are relying on their own supporters arming the factions incorporated as a pseudo-armed forces rather than a centralized force, or if steps are taken in that direction, I think it will be an enormous help as far as security is concerned.
MR. KUNDER: Yes.
QUESTION: So I don't know what measures have been taken or something. You have discussed with Minister Jalali and Mr. Karzai on the security or not?
MR. KUNDER: Yes, I understand the question completely. The security system along the road is multi-tiered. There are several levels to the security system. First, the contractors themselves, the Indian contractors, Turkish contractors hired local security guards to protect their camps and their equipment; then, at the next level, certainly there were agreements made with the provincial governors and local authorities to add an additional level was that we did work with Minister Jalali and the Minister of Interior to create what we are calling a highway patrol element within the Ministry of Interior security forces.
And we had hundreds of such workers, such guards, patrolling the highway, and in our view, doing quite an excellent job in preventing some security incidents -- in some cases, engaging attackers in the return fire. Then, on top of that, we worked with the U.S. military and the coalition forces to provide some overflights, some evacuation and a quick response force, in case the highway was attacked by a large scale force.
So there were many partners in the security task, but I can assure you the Minister of Interior had forces patrolling the highway in quite sizeable numbers, and we intend to maintain that partnership as the construction went forward. As I mentioned earlier, the Afghans themselves -- the Americans helped with this road, as did the Japanese and the Saudis, but the Afghans themselves had a very large hand in constructing this road.
MR. DENIG: Okay. One last question, Finland.
QUESTION: I'm sorry. I always speak about money. But how much was pledged in Tokyo, a little less than two years ago? And how much did the road cost thus far? What's the price tag?
MR. KUNDER: Now you're asking me to go back and recreate numbers that I'm not sure I have in my mind. It seems to me that I recall the number was $2.3 billion total pledges. The U.S. Government pledge -- I'm sorry -- I had all these numbers exactly in my head at one point.
The U.S. Government pledge has been far exceeded by a factor of at least three or four times what was originally pledged. Much of what was pledged originally went for the initial humanitarian assistance, food assistance to the Afghan people, because you recall the Taliban fell just at the onset of winter, and much of the agricultural productive capacity of the country was destroyed.
So there was a need to move emergency food into the country through the World Food Program, and much of our initial assistance was essentially emergency assistance to keep people alive during the winter. And also, as soon as the Taliban fell, there was a large amount of repatriation of refugees from Pakistan and Iran. And much of the early U.S. Government assistance went to assist, through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and other organizations, the repatriation of refugees.
Subsequent to that, we have made a substantial commitment to actual reconstruction activities, like the highway that we're talking about. But I'd be glad to give you the precise figures on how much we pledged to Tokyo and how much we have now made available, but I can tell you the U.S. certainly exceeded by a factor of at least three times what was originally pledged.
On the highway itself, our original estimates were that it would cost a little less than $100 million to do the Kabul to Kandahar portion of the highway. We have now exceeded $200 million because once we got in there -- and first of all, we discovered that the engineering was going to be more difficult, the de-mining was going to need to be more extensive -- the President made the determination to accelerate this road, and we accelerated it. We hired five construction companies to operate simultaneously along different segments of the road. President Karzai certainly let President Bush know that the early completion of this road was the highest possible priority for his government. And so, money and time are inversely related when it comes to highway construction. So the budget now is a little bit over $200 million for the Kabul to Kandahar portion.
MR. DENIG: One final question from India.
QUESTION: But going back to security, as far as security is concerned, who are these people still enemy of Afghanistan? Are they still Talibans, or who is directing them? Do you think Usama bin Laden is still somewhere around in the area, and he doesn't want you to construct or Afghans to live the peaceful life they used to do?
And, second, how long do you think this will take to complete the entire road system in Afghanistan? And also, what is the situation, as far as water and electricity?
MR. KUNDER: Well, I don't like to duck questions, but I think I'll duck that question. The U.S. Agency for International Development is not our primary source of information on who the perpetrators are. I mean, clearly, there are some remnant Taliban elements and remnant al-Qaida elements. But there are, in some cases, criminal elements, drug elements that are involved in some of these attacks. So it's a combination of things, but I think I'll let others in the U.S. Government answer that question more directly.
But my sense is that looking forward, in terms of a timeline, there are two
timelines: One is that Afghanistan is a poor country, and it will need donor assistance from the U.S., from the multilateral banks, from other bilateral donors for some time to come. Just as we have ongoing development programs in more than 70 countries around the world, it's my view that we will probably have a long-term development program in Afghanistan after the immediate reconstruction is done.
I think in the next couple of years, if we maintain the international donor support, we can give a jumpstart to the reconstruction. We can get the basic infrastructure rebuilt, the basic government structures reconstituted and working again. And then we'll have Afghanistan back to where it was maybe in 1978. Then we'll have to begin the long-term development process. Because I think the Afghans aspire to more than where they were in 1978, but to have a fully modern, prosperous, peaceful society, and that's going to be a project that we will be working on for years into the future, in my view.
QUESTION: (Inaudible.)
MR. KUNDER: Pardon me, sir?
QUESTION: Is that the water and electricity?
MR. KUNDER: When I say infrastructure, I mean the water and electricity, as well. I think we'll be able to restore the basic transmission lines. We're working now, for example, on the Helmand dam at Kajaki to restore the turbines there, which supplies much of the electricity to the south. We're looking at restoring some of the transmission lines from Tajikistan that provide Kabul with electrical service, so I think what you'll see is in the next couple of years, most of this basic infrastructure can be pulled back together.
But then we have long-terms problems in healthcare, in education, in stimulating the agricultural economy -- to provide alternatives to poppy production, for example. And those are not problems that are going to be solved in the next two or three years. Those are long-term development problems that are going to take some years after that to address.
Thank you very much.
MR. DENIG: Thank you, Jim. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
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