Building Hope and Resilience: Afghanistan’s Path to Security, Reform, and Global Partnership

Remarks at Special Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board (JCMB) Meeting

Keypoints: 

• National Unity & Pride: Using sports as symbols of teamwork, discipline, and national optimism.
• Security & Defense: Strengthening forces and promoting volunteerism to protect the country.
• Development & Stability: Meeting economic benchmarks and engaging the private sector for sustainable growth.
• Governance & Anti-Corruption: Reforming institutions and procurement for transparency and accountability.
• Rule of Law & Justice: Implementing legal reforms, focusing on women’s and children’s rights.
• Partnership & Diplomacy: Building lasting regional and global cooperation.
• Political Will & Leadership: Prioritizing realistic, medium-term planning over populism.
• Public Engagement: Ensuring citizen involvement for responsive governance.

Presidential Palace, Kabul
To fell pain and joy is human. As we are looking forward to Brussels, we sympathize with all the victims of terrorism. May I ask you for a moment of silence in honor of victims of terrorism in Afghanistan and globally.

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

I am wearing the proud of jacket of our national cricket team, so let me begin with a symbol; our cricket and soccer teams that have made it to the global level. And my deepest sympathies Mr. Ambassador of India, we beat West Indies, but they beat you [President Ashraf Ghani is joking with Ambassador of India] So congratulations simultaneously.

These are models of reform; they are not just sources of jury. What makes them models of reform? First, team work and discipline; these are the two most disciplined entities in this country. Second, leadership and management; they have extraordinary leadership and they have very very sound management. Thirdly is benchmarking and learning. 15 years ago, our cricket players were dreaming on rented televisions in backstreets celebrating the glory of others, but they did not set their goals to become among the ten worst teams; they set their goals to become among and compete with the ten best teams. It was not a vision without the means of achieving it because in other areas, unfortunately, our visions have been very tall; our efforts have been very small.

Here they have balanced desirability, feasibility and credibility. Each step has been a foundation, a ladder for other steps; and in the process, they have learned. They have learned from their mistakes. They have had the discipline to be honest about their mistakes and not to defend those mistakes, but to address them to identify the shortcomings and move forward.

They have also established what has not been established in any other domain. They have established regional partnerships. One of our coaches is Indian; the other is Pakistani. I hope that that again becomes a symbol. We have brought the region together and we are working in that domain. Equally global partnerships; they have received extraordinary support from global institutions, but their most significant activity is they have given the Afghan public hope. They have given them something to celebrate. They unite our nation in joy, and everybody in this country prays for the soccer team and the cricket team.

And they have got private support. Last week, I made a call to one of our significant entrepreneurs, and on the spot, he gave a million dollars for the cricket team. This is an extraordinary manifestation of what we can do together. When accomplishments are real, everybody gets to be mobilized. People donate from a dollar or an Afghani to a million dollars because they know that it can work. The board [Afghanistan Cricket Board] is an extraordinary board. I want to congratulate Minister Hakimi, Minister Naderi, other members of the board, and for the immense support that my colleagues have given.

Now permit me to focus on the context in which we are attempting to bring lasting and sustainable transformation to this country.

First, we are facing the fifth wave of global violence. The first wave began with [Sergey] Nechayev and his manifesto of an anarchist turning to a professional revolutionary, but now we are in the middle of the fifth wave. Each of the previous four waves has lasted 20–30 years. We need to cope with the difficult message that we have a medium problem on our hand. There is no place that is secure and we are all united in defending common values. We are the target of Al-Qaeda, Daesh, regional terrorist groups, Tehrik-e Taliban of Pakistan and of course other sets of entities that threaten the whole region and attempt to threaten the globe. We need, under common understanding, from intelligence to a common framework. Our problem has been the Cassandra Syndrome. When one of us warns, all of us do not agree. And we need to be able to establish a common framework unapologetically, undefensively and clearly because the enemy recognizes no friend. Unlike us they have learned from all the previous four waves. Their information is incredibly good and accumulated set of techniques.

Second, we are dealing with an attempt to hijack a civilization. A tiny tiny minority today dares speak for 1.6 billion Muslims of the world. Yet, a lot of us have chosen silence instead of defending the civilization that gives the world so much from Arabic numerals to medicine, to philosophy to incorporation of other civilizations. We were the civilization that had no hesitation translating Greeks works for over hundred years or Chinese text are being in paper or Indian numerals otherwise becoming known. But, we need to defend for this civilization and there is an attempt to hijack it. And like all hijackings, we need to defend it completely.

Third, we are dealing with climate change. You know, the beginning of the winter, all our colleagues with enormous technology and others from UN agencies told me you would have a very good season. Well, of course you know, it is not their limits. It is the limits of our understanding and changes that we are dealing uncertainty. Two month ago, they were telling me that the last six months of this year are going to be drought conditions, and I was saving every penny not to spend so that I could prepare for drought and then we see that we have 25 percent more rain in the last weeks. It’s the limits of knowledge. We are dealing with uncertainty both at the level of global threats and we are dealing with uncertainty environmentally. As a result of it, then we are dealing with the third context elite lamented; that wisdom was replaced by knowledge and knowledge by information and judgment was being lost. We live in a world where information is everywhere, but knowledge and wisdom is in shortage. Everything we do is subjected to enormous scrutiny but the sense of judgment that is required to enable us to focus in bringing short, medium and long term into alignment is subject to multiple guessing. And, of course, this is a free society and we are proud of it, but it needs to be understood that working in a context like this changes the meaning of political will and the meaning of determination.

Fourth, we are living in a neighborhood without rules of the game. Our tragedy is that the states of this region have still not learned that there are no good terrorists, so non-state actors are being tolerated or supported actively by states, and states use non-state actors as instruments of policy and there is no global jury or regional mechanisms to say that we sink or swim together. The lessons of the past are still not being learned.

And lastly, there are short-term frameworks. We are driven by short-term considerations and these frameworks, unfortunately, are defensive. We much rather engage in blame games than solving and facing our problems. Defensive reasoning always has second order, third order, fourth order and consequences because we see it continuously all around it. It is not our relationship vis-à-vis our international partners nationally.

In this context, what have we done? What do we intend to do?

First let me address security. We have an all-out volunteer force. Not a single person in our national security apparatus is a conscript. A month ago, Minister [Mohammad Masoom] Stanekzai presiding to whom, we are extraordinary grateful for his leadership. I swore-in 549 members of the graduating class of the Military Academy and we are very proud to say 13 of them were women. Right after their graduation, they have gone to Uruzgan. They have gone to the hardest assignments. The will to defend this country is complete and the culture of sacrifice and commitment is very real. Please before you address the international forums, engage with our soldiers and with our officers. Your projection of gloom and doom affect people. Talk has to be responsible.

What did we face in the security arena? An all-out war to bring down the regime. It escalated to seven phases, distinct seven phases. They threw everything they had at us but the Afghan State is still in place. Yes, we have lost very very brave soldiers and officers. We have had civilian casualties, but did you judge England during the air invasion by the number of casualties or by the determination in 1941? Every one advised Churchill to make a deal at that time. We need to understand what is the context so the criteria of judgment can correspond to the context.

When the first attack took place on a hill in Dangam, it took us one week – and Mr. Atmar had to practically live night and day with – to organize the defensive needed. Today, in fifteen locations, our armed forces have taken the initiative every night; our special forces mount 5–7 operations. The road that we have come needs to be realistically assessed and appreciated. These are people and – yes we have problems of corruption with our police – but these are the same people who have embraced suicide bombers in order to save the lives of people. The sacrifice is real, and the commitment [is real] because these are people who do not want to become refugees again. If there is one thing in this country on which there is consensus across the board, no one again wants to become a refugee. And what is the key indicator? Mr. Alokozai will speak to you later. The private sector is no longer concerned about the regime’s survival. It is engaging the government; it is beginning to invest and is changing the balance of trade, and the public pulse now is on development, governance and anti-corruption. Yes, security and peace are our first priorities, but the public is addressing a wider sense of issues and things. Because of it, we are proud particularly in the last four months of taking the initiative. Let us again understand. This is a defensive work. We are committed to peace and to a vision of inclusion but we will defend as particularly I who am elected as the commander in chief of this country.

Second, development. Poverty increased from 46% in 2013 to 49% in 2014; hidden unemployment, the departure of NATO. NATO, ISAF was the largest economic force in the country. It was not just the largest security force. It is like taking 40% of the economy out with upper middle class demands. Despite this situation, what have we done? First, every single benchmark of the IMF has been successfully met. Not only met, it has been exceeded. I want to particularly thank Minister [Ekil] Hakimi. He should get the Finance Minister of the Year award, because he managed to increase revenue by 22% in a context of severe recession bordering on depression. For ten years, we had not met any of the IMF benchmarks in total, and we have done.

Second, success of the new development framework. We thank the United States for stepping forward with the new development framework. Every single benchmark of the new development framework has been met. We have received cash in return for reforms. And not only that; with the World Bank administered funds and Asian Development funds, Minister Hakimi has not only managed to get the money, he has received bonuses for performances as they were agreed upon. And, every single bonus again has been acquired.

Thirdly, we began the Government of National Unity’s tenure with one of the softest budgets around. There was no budget discipline. A soft budget, a term that was made by the distinguished Hungarian economist [Janos] ‘Kornay’ to then apply in Hungary and Poland, is when there are no constraints. The budget is acquiring hard constraints. It has required enormous political will to refuse off-budget expenditures or extra budget expenditures. Everything now is being brought within the framework of the budget. As a result of this, what has happened and particularly this is the first year where the budget was approved on time by Parliament and began implementation of the budget at the beginning of the year.

This was result of a national conversation to make the budget the central instrument of policy. This conversation has had multiple parts. One has been a very significant conversation with parliament. All the taxes that were necessary have been enacted into law. These are not temporary measures, and every decree that I issued on taxes has been approved by Parliament. The analysis that has been done by the United States Institute of Peace shows that these are sustainable gains on revenue, not a one-time gain.

The second is now the budget has become the key source of conversation between the ministries and the provinces. We have never had a sentence of dialogue between the provinces and the ministries as we have had in the past year. Every ministry has a written contract with the provinces regarding implementation so now we can monitor.

But, third and most significantly is becoming a source of major conversation with the private sector.

Next issue that we have moved from short-term budget’s bases on compromises between ministries to a medium-term horizon and national priorities. The job of elected leaders is to set priorities.

What were symptoms of the soft budget and short-term compromises? A project portfolio that did not perform. Contracts that were awarded not to be finished, but in order to rob the public purse. Last year, we inherited a deficit; we had no room, and it has taken enormous political will to avoid populous slogans. But this year, we have acquired the freedom to be able to address the public needs. And it is here that the private sector is being engaged so that we don’t have a static economy, but a dynamic expanding economy.

Next issue is good governance. Again the first issue is to recognize the problem. The problem is corruption as capture; capturing of institutions, capturing of politics, capturing of economics and capturing of security. Simply put, the problem is that state-building which is the key desire of the public is resisted by interest that wants a weak state. A weak state is key to corruption and to mismanagement, and we need to recognize the phenomenon and name it. The good news is enormous public support. The bad news is that interests that were tolerated to emerge—they are not elites; because to call them elites is the privilege. Short-termism guides, a number of these interests our key challenge is to give them a medium-term, a long-term horizon.

First let me put some of the points that we have addressed.

First, banking. Banking is the dog that did not bark. When I took over, the Afghan banking sector faced the risk of imminent collapse. Today, I can inform the public and you that the banking sector has been reformed. Not only have we reversed Kabul Bank’s—the debt collection under Mr. Hakimi’s able chairmanship and support from our security sector, all our colleagues across the government. The Pashtany Tijarat Bank, a bank that was totally considered defunct is now beginning to lend. Its bad debts would recover. Kabul Bank has actually two offers of purchase and their consideration. Look at objectively, Governor Khalil Sediq [of Da Afghanistan Bank] has done enormously good job at the CAMELS Ratings. What were the CAMELS ratings in October of 2014? What are the CAMELS ratings of these banks today? The Central Bank is not an instrument of collusion with individuals who use the banking system as an instrument of robbing the public, their depositors.

Second, procurement. Why did we focus on procurement? I have chaired 54 sessions myself. Minister of Economy, Minister of Justice, Minister of Finance, my distinguished colleague Dr. Abdullah [The Chief Executive] and our pride Dr. Qayoumi are all sitting on this because procurement is where all the forms of institutional capture come together. We reviewed over 1000 contracts. It reached the point where Minister Murad was saying, ‘Why are we sitting here? If we are dealing with this mess, why are we giving so much time?’ Isn’t that what you said Mr. Murad? But today aren’t you seeing contracts that are totally complying with the law, with sub sub-paragraphs of the Procurement Law. It is entailed an immense focus on the culture of governance. What did we discover? Formal compliance at the level of bidding; 90% of the companies that bid for some contracts did not exist. In other places there are post office address, here there are rented rooms. In the Ministry of Defense’s new contract for food, alone, we are saving AFN 1.2 billion, because we have gone from hundreds of contracts to about seven, framework contracts. In fuel, related set of issues.

The key message is I want to make sure that your hard-paying tax payers understand that we are not playing with their money. Because of it, security sector procurement took our first priority, and also we needed to make decisions and they were extremely hard decisions. Because when you take on procurement in the middle of an imposed war, you have to both meet the urgent needs and yet bring structural reforms. And, Minister Stanekzai again has done a fantastic job. He has made 600 people who are responsible for mid-level declare their assets.

Ministry of Interior; we still have significant challenges, we will meet them this year before Warsaw and certainly before Brussels.

Next is the court system. If there was one indication across the board that Taliban group had a comparative advantage to us in the eyes of the public was the court system. Now, we have not just achieved justice was a reformist, but a reforming court is being consolidated. 120 judges were changed; all provincial appellate court judges have been changed. The next wave will be announced within two weeks. Judgment speed has increased 75% because there were people who were sitting up to 6 years or 8 years for a judgment from Primary Court to the Appellate Court.

And the question of women. Again, we commissioned a special study by Supreme Court of the women’s prison, and one case was extraordinary revealing. A woman was in prison for 20 years and she kept appealing, asking; nobody would listen. After I went and she raised the case. Yes, it was a computer mistake. A computer mistake was taking 10 years away the life of the woman. And there had been significant advances here in terms of addressing the rights of women and children including formation of a special division headed by one of the members of the Supreme Court specifically making judgments on women and children.

Next was the portfolio review. All the projects that were being financed were reviewed. Both those financed generously by our partners and those financed by ourselves. And, I hope it gives you an indication that we discontinued projects that were not performing. That is what is created the fiscal room for us. I call upon the UN to do the similar project portfolio review and post the results on its websites. You have promised us Mr. Haysom repeatedly a One-UN system, I call upon you to adhere to the International Convention against Corruption released the audit reports, and tell the Afghan public and the global public whether you’re matching our commitment to transparency and we would be delighted. And if you can’t, again we will understand. But we are doing our project portfolio review in full and in the process and we are understanding what are the problems. There have also been investigations. Significant number of investigations have been completed to enable us to focus on follow up and clean up.

The other is in inventory. We are compiling a national inventory of the government’s assets, public assets. I’ll give you just one illustration. Kabul province, just the State-Owned Enterprises have 35,000 hectares of prime land in the city and in the province. A lot of these are under fall rentals or low uses. Now we can plan the city of Kabul and the province of Kabul properly, and we will do this inventory across the board to seeing how the system will work.

Ministries prioritized; again Minister Murad, I asked him; we mobilized in terms of 100-day action plans, and I asked him what is your feedback. He says, ‘It forced us to move from an ocean to a focused—and other colleagues have come similar ways. These plans have given us a mechanism to set priorities and to understand what’s wrong. Minister [Ali Ahmad] Osmani, our very able minister of Energy and Water said as a result of his 100-day last year that he would not be able to spend, it takes a lot of courage; thank you Minister Osmani for this courage. This year he would be able to launch 29 dams; he will be able to share them with you.

Cabinet accountability has been established; we are making laws. One of the key functions of cabinet is to change the legal rules of the game and our first item of business is that we have cleared all the backlog, up to 80 years of backlog, Mr. Rabbani has cleared every single treaty or agreement that was part of a backlog. Colleagues in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs need to be thanked. Equally I brought your attention to their provincial framework agreement. I have personally interviewed, out of a process, sixteen new mayors. Every single one of these new mayors has a plan for public participation and public private partnership and we’ll network them. But still corruption is our fundamental challenge.

And here we need to differentiate between symptoms and drivers. Symptoms; I just mentioned some of them. Appointments; appointments are patronage [inaudible word] But, we are now focusing on creating those databases particularly the ministry of education to see what we have it. Yesterday I had a conversation; minister of Education needs to be thanked. One database on payroll, one database on appointment, one database on MIS. Every single one of these reporting different figures. So, technology has not become a solution, it has become part of a problem. And now relentless verification will take place.

Audits were an instruments of capture. The banking sector, contracts and projects, courts, prosecution, property rights, customs’ revenues, smuggling, land grabs, narcotics; the list can go on in terms of symptoms. But the key is a balanced approach in addressing symptoms and drivers. We are ready now, I have issued the decree to form a council on governance and anti-corruption.

Why did I wait till now? Why did we wait, because it is not my personal thing? Because we are now ready we all understand where the challenge is and how to prioritize it. And, one of our institutions that is really working well is the Land Authority. Land Authority has done a fantastic job. Minister Paikar needs to be really appreciated and his full reform agenda and we can deal with anti-corruption.

Let me come with our critical issue; partnership. First of all, let me thank you for your very generous commitments and particularly for changing the short-term horizon of 2015 now to a medium-term horizon. I would like to thank every one of the ambassadors, every one of the aid directors, every one of our colleagues at the UN system across all the arena for their efforts to be such good ambassadors and such advocates for us.

Last year we were operating with 9 months of commitment; you do understand what toll uncertainty can take. I particularly want to thank President Obama, Chancellor Merkel, Prime Minister Cameron, Prime Minister Renzi, Japan’s Prime Minister and other colleagues; China, India, Turkey, our key neighbors for trusting in our future. I am particularly heartened by the words of those of our partners that do not put time horizons on the partnership. Every one of you who have used those words, let me say thank you from the bottom of our heart.

We look at partnership as a constructive conversation first and foremost, meaning that we need to establish a common baseline of where we are. What our challenges are without apology and without any defensiveness on our part. Partners, you don’t need to speak truth the power, we have no power, but you need to speak truth through friends. Friends speak truth through each other, we can establish a common conversation because friends believe in each other. So we invite a really sustained open conversation, and I again thank Mr. Hakimi, Mr. Rabbani for organizing an open conversation and Mr. Haysom of course is the co-chair, so there is maximum opportunity there for talking – I am exception, I apologize if I have taken too long.

The second issue, again let me emphasize the Afghan public. We have illiteracy, we have poverty but we do not have stupidity. We have wisdom; the public is wise; the public pulse is reformist. Not only is it reformist, it’s demanding reform. Every reform measure that the government attempts, the public welcomes. This has no precedent in our history so the public conversation is really important they are demanding. Predatory interest by contrast want re-governance and that’s a challenge and we need to confront it. So here what is important among partners is to reach agreement on goals, mechanisms and outcomes.

What are the goals? Goals cannot be apple pie in motherhood. Goals need to be realistic; goals need to be deliverable; the way our soccer team, our cricket team set goals for themselves. We will put the discipline, but we need to be measured realistically. Key to the setting goals is the difference between the goal and the current objective situation. From what baseline are we starting? So our efforts can be judged realistically.

Second is agreements on mechanisms. What is important, colleagues, is to understand that on-budget works; parallel institutions have not worked. Thanks to parallel institutions; we have 13 types of salaries in our government, 13. How will we persuade a person that AFN 5000 compares to $8,000. We need to bring order to this. And, without the hard budget constraint, without the medium-term horizon, and without your willingness to work with us on this, it’d be very difficult. We do understand your constraints, but let us have a conversation and see where we can get maximum effects on the mechanism.

And, the other is to be outcome revenue. My conversation with my ministerial colleagues are both very simple and very hard. They are very simple because I want one card from each ministry to tell me what are the outcomes, and almost every ministry’s outcome can be put on a single note card. The difficulty is they keep giving me inputs, and their advisors are giving them more inputs. Inputs are no good. We can laugh a bit; in old Afghanistan, we used to go to rural areas and urbanites would say ‘thank you’ and rural people would say, “Can I eat ‘thank you’ or use it as cloths? Give me something real in the way of appreciation.” What the public wants are deliverables; for instance, you know two of our colleagues are going to talk to you about agriculture. I want to understand what all these inputs result in income of the farming family. The productivity; because when I talk to farmers, they put two measures; productivity and income. And, we have some farmers who are making now AFN 400,000 form 400 m2 through greenhouses. Others who are not making 400,000 from 100 acres. This conversation is important so we would like to focus on outcomes and these outcomes would become specific.

The next issue is reform has to be a learning process. To embark on reform requires both determination but it also requires humility. The humility comes that in this context that I outline no one has the full recipe because we are working with uncertainty and we need to be willing to learn together, and acknowledge honest mistakes not as mechanisms of punishment but as mechanisms of learning together. Key is to avoid a blame game. You are our partners and the public is our master. So, it’s important to embark on a mutual learning process. Here, political will translates as ownership and as accountability. Political will on the part of the Afghan government, everyone in the government particularly me as the chief servant of the people means that we own our problems. We do not blame anyone else for our problems. The problems are distinctively Afghan, they require distinctively Afghan solutions, they require distinctive Afghan conversations, but they are not just Afghan problems. And here, the fundamental point; Afghanistan’s conflict is not a civil war, it is an imposed regional and global conflict on us. That requires deep and broad partnership. God forbid about the next activity of Al-Qaeda. Everybody is captured by Daesh. Al-Qaeda’s gone deep in dark. Let us pay attention to it before they surprise us. Equally, about other terrorist groups. The region is not secure because weak links, weak points are utilized.

The second issue on political will is accountability. Accountability here requires a judgment. King Amanullah, the person who is celebrated always as a reformer, was the person who misjudged the greatest; as a result of that, we have unfinished chapter of our history. The Dar-ul Aman Palace stands as a monument of failed efforts. It was not failed imagination; it was failed effort. Three times after that we got the agenda of reform wrong because the right balance between continuity and change was not established. We need to understand both the desire for reform and the obstacles to it. So we can arrive at those realistic mechanisms to ensure that we do not repeat the past but overcome it, and key to political will is to overcome the past. And, political will here first and foremost means avoiding populism. People do not eat from empty slogans. People’s passions cannot be harnessed for ill will, for false goals. The people of Afghanistan are phenomenally good judges, we need to give them respect and to work to deliver to them honestly. Every group of Afghans, every stakeholder that comes here and enormous of them, I am privileged to travel across the country is asking for things that are sound. But the means for delivering those are what we need to shape. Because of this, let me conclude with saying that we see Warsaw and Brussels as inherently connected. Our key approach and I thank all of colleagues who have joint in this. First couple of points. One; we have brought a limited number of our colleagues to talk to you today, but this is not the end of conversation. We would like to continue this conversation in depth we other ministers, with other organizations. They can all share in the conversation, because everybody has a contribution. Second; we want to go to Warsaw and Brussels with reforms that we have accomplished, and not talk or reforms. So, we need to agree on what are those reforms that we must accomplish and those conversations on issues of mutual interests that we must have in order to move forward.

Three; the world is crowded, we understand, but you have made a significant investment in Afghanistan. It is an investment in our mutual security, so we would like to be considered on base of the merit of our case and our commitment. This means that this conversation will translate into a national conversation. We will also, of course, have enormous regional sets of conversation because to deal with the fifth wave, we need action at the global level, at the Islamic level, at the regional level, at the national, at the sub-national. Each one of those is proceeding in different ways. We are pleased in conversation with our neighbors near and far, from Indian and Azerbaijan to Russia, conversations with China elsewhere. We do, Pakistan and Afghanistan, face a common task. Lahore again is a reminder; it requires focus; it requires political will. And I hope that that can be mobilized. And, Brussels relates to the underlying fundamentals. A stable Afghanistan is an Afghanistan where the Afghan, the 49% who live below a $1.30 will feel a sense of ownership. So poverty eradication is really central and critical to our agenda of security. Now, poverty and security cannot be differentiated from each other. All kinds of evidences you know that those who are leading the hijacking don’t come from the poorest, but poverty is a source of instability. Because structural source of instability, if we want empowerment and an empowered citizenry, we have to address their poverty and I am sure that Warsaw and Brussels will give us this opportunity.

I want to thank you again, thank the co-chairs Minister Hakimi, Minster Hasson and all our colleagues for your commitment and I look very much forward to the results of this creative and constructive conversation that you will be having regarding preparations for Warsaw and Brussels and our ongoing partnerships.