1995 Dayton Peace Accords<\/a>, which ended the Bosnian civil war.<\/p>\n\u201cNegotiations are a lot like jazz,\u201d said the 68-year-old diplomat. \u201cThey\u2019re improvisations on a theme.\u201d The bargaining table is a place for both focus and flexibility, he said, but final agreements had better be both acceptable to all parties and enforceable.<\/p>\n
Still, any classic assumptions about negotiation are confounded in Afghanistan, because \u201cthe Taliban do not represent a government,\u201d said Holbrooke, who called the group instead \u201ca political movement led from sanctuary.\u201d Al-Qaeda, which he said is \u201ceven more shadowy,\u201d represents the same bargaining complication. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing they want we could give them,\u201d said Holbrooke, \u201cand there\u2019s nothing we could give them they want.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also, there are places that U.S. diplomacy does not go these days, and one is Kashmir, he said, because \u201can outside negotiator can\u2019t do the job.\u201d Since 1947, India has been pitted against Pakistan in conflicts that have erupted three times over that disputed area.<\/p>\n
India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are the center of what may be \u201cthe most volatile part of the world today,\u201d said Holbrooke, and are important to international stability. Other nations have security interests there, including Russia, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. It\u2019s \u201ca very, very large terrain,\u201d said Holbrooke, which in diplomatic terms includes \u201ca lot of moving parts.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the unsteady center of this unstable region, he said, is Afghanistan, \u201ca weak and poor country\u201d wracked by 31 years of warfare.<\/p>\n
Thirteen months ago, Holbrooke and his new team at the White House were \u201castonished at what a mess we had inherited\u201d in Afghanistan, he said. Back then, the United States was represented by just 300 civilian employees and \u2014 more disturbing, said Holbrooke \u2014 only 10 agricultural specialists in a country that was once a breadbasket to the region. (A year later, those numbers, respectively, are 900 and 100.)<\/p>\n
The United States halted a poppy seed eradication program that was driving farmers into the arms of the Taliban, he said. Cash-for-work programs are in place for farmers, and U.S. National Guard teams are bringing agricultural experts to the countryside.<\/p>\n
There are also more efforts now to train Afghan police and army units.<\/p>\n
With these \u201cvast changes,\u201d said Holbrooke, comes an ancillary fact: There has been no emphasis yet on bringing international diplomacy to bear on Afghanistan. But in the wake of America\u2019s civilian buildup, he added, the United States is now ready to look at issues of international terrorism.<\/p>\n
For future diplomats in the HKS audience, said Holbrooke, Afghanistan offers an opportunity for an active posting analogous to the one he took as a young man, distributing U.S. aid in rural Vietnam. \u201cIt was greener,\u201d he said of the Mekong Delta, but in Afghanistan parallel opportunities await.<\/p>\n
Holbrooke praised other changes in the U.S. response to Afghanistan in the past year, including a provision requiring a minimum tour of one year for federal civilian employees, up from six months under the Bush administration. Recruitment for the civilian buildup has been accelerated by \u201c3161 authority\u201d provisions in the U.S. Code, he said, a process that streamlines getting federal civilian employees into reconstruction zones. The same authority, said Holbrooke, is needed to speed U.S. federal civilian employees on their way to Pakistan.<\/p>\n
But U.S. aid of any kind should avoid what he called a \u201cdependency trap,\u201d through assistance that overrides or neglects local authorities. \u201cClassic direct civic action\u201d can certainly accomplish good deeds, said Holbrooke, but if it stays American-only, it is not sustainable.<\/p>\n
At any rate, starting in July 2011, the United States expects to begin military withdrawals from Afghanistan, the \u201cpace and scope\u201d of which are yet to be determined. But \u201cthe civilian effort must continue,\u201d said Holbrooke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1963, Richard Holbrooke was a 22-year-old Foreign Service officer in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, where a war that would inform U.S. policy for a generation was just beginning to widen. Nearly 50 years later, he is still involved in diplomacy, now for the White House as special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Measured […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-407505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}