Afghanistan 'A Theme Park Of Problems'

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

Here's a larger question: Is Afghanistan governable? Are the problems that Soraya just described severe but solvable? Or is the country beyond repair?

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

Well, here's an optimist. Professor ALI JALALI (Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University): I call Afghanistan a theme park of problems. It will take a long time.

SIEGEL: Ali Jalali was the Afghan Interior Minister from 2003 to 2005. He's now a professor at the National Defense University in Washington. Jalali says Afghanistan can be governed, and the Afghan people want an effective central government - even though it's been decades since the country had one - decades of war and division.

Prof. JALALI: There's no doubt Afghanistan is composed of different tribes, ethnic groups, different areas - the valleys are separate from one another. However, Afghans learn through history, through the experience that they faced, that they can live with each other, that nationhood is based on what (unintelligible) called the will to persist together.

SIEGEL: You're saying the idea of Afghanistan, you're saying, survives among all the different peoples of Afghanistan.

Prof. JALALI: That's exactly the thing. That's why in the civil war, the different factions who are fighting each other, they were not fighting their own region, they were fighting for Kabul. They're fighting for Afghanistan.

SIEGEL: However, Afghanistan after 30 years will soon be peopled by a generation that has no clear memory of what life was like before all this began, devastating the country.

Prof. JALALI: That's true. But in Afghanistan, I think, people have long memories.

SIEGEL: When it comes to governance, Afghans need long memories. The last period of tranquility they can recall was the constitutional monarchy of Mohammed Zahir Shah. He gave women the vote. He tried to improve the schools. But he was overthrown in 1973. Is there a trusted Afghan government somewhere on the horizon? Well, Patricia DeGennaro, who has spent time in Afghanistan as an advisor to Hamid Karzai, is pessimistic.

Dr. PATRICIA DEGENNARO (Senior Fellow, World Policy Institute): I personally am very skeptical based on my experience there. You do need a good governance partner, because you want to be able to bring things to the people that they want to have. I mean, for instance, today, I heard, well, we would like to have better roads.

SIEGEL: Pretty basic level?

Dr. DEGENNARO: Right. It's?

SIEGEL: ?of governance: Can you build a road and?

Dr. DEGENNARO: Right. Can you build a road? Can you get me some electricity or a generator, or some health care for the women and the children that need it?

SIEGEL: And you're saying so far the answer has been no.

Dr. DEGENNARO: No.

SIEGEL: They can't. Is that because of the war? Is it the conflict that prevents Kabul from being able to do those things? Or is it some degree of ineptitude in the government, or corruption that makes it less than up to the task?

Dr. DEGENNARO: It's both of those things. And it's also I think the overbearing dominance of the international community, on not allowing or insisting that the president and the administration find a way to learn how to govern.

We're much more focused on the war effort than we are on a civilian governance effort or development effort.

SIEGEL: That's Patricia DeGennaro of the World Policy Institute. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.