US fails to manage Afghan war: Waliullah Rahmani

A political analyst tells Press TV that Afghanistan is a conflict-plagued country and because of the nature of being a war-torn country it is hard to carry out projects that could be effective.

About 13 million dollars of US funds sourced from American taxpayer money to upgrade a power infrastructure project in Afghanistan is “sitting unused in storage” due to a lack of a clear installation plan, a report says.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Waliullah Rahmani, executive director of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies, to further discuss the issue. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Why does the money pledged and allocated for aid never meet its purpose in Afghanistan, when so much money is wasted on war and destruction?

Rahmani: Well we could say that there are various reasons for this issue. One of the main reasons is that the Americans who are here, they are changing in a very short time. For example each American diplomat or someone serving in the military establishment every nine months they have to go back to home. For that reason I think there are various mismanagements happening.

The second thing is that there are various parallel institutions who are working in Afghanistan from the Afghan side, for example the US had various military institutions and Secretary of State and others. So coordinating between all these institutions in Afghanistan needs a lot of energy, time and of course a strong structure that I do not think at the time that the Americans are trying to for example fight terrorism or put a kind of insurgency strategy in place of course at the same time doing [state] building and nation building if it’s in processes, it has happened rightly and correctly.

At the same time, you should not forget that Afghanistan is a conflict dominated country. You cannot really go forward with your programs and objectives with good partners all the time I mean because of the nature of being a war-torn it is hard to do projects that could be effective.

I do think all these are the main reasons for waste of wealth or American money in Afghanistan.

Press TV: And how would you address the issue of the Taliban insurgency? By many accounts the Taliban have actually grown in strength over the past ten years or so?

Rahmani: Well there are various reasons for this strength of the Taliban. The main reason I can see is that the Taliban have hideouts outside Afghanistan. Based on my studies of the insurgencies from elsewhere to our region in Tajikistan in 1990’s, those insurgencies that have hideouts and that have houses abroad the host nation, it is hard to combat them, it is hard to end those insurgencies.

And since you see that there are various reports and of course documents stating that Taliban have strong presence in Pakistan and there are various Pakistani establishments sponsoring them, I believe because of that whatever counter-insurgency the strategy that has been put in place we can fragile this. Afghan state has been hard and difficult to achieve the main result and goal to counter the Taliban and the insurgency in Afghanistan.

I think countering and ending insurgency in Afghanistan like many other, in our region for example the West, the Nagaland insurgency in India and others needs time and of course for that reason we have to have a strategic patience in Afghans to end this conflict in Afghanistan.