Al Jazeera Inside Story interviews Director of CAPS

Mr. Hekmat Karzai, the Director at Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies, in Kabul, Afghanistan was part of a panel of 3 interviewees on Al Jazeera’s program, Inside Story, covering the recent US Senate Committee report on nation-building in Afghanistan. Inside Story revealed that the Senate report which took two years to compile, shows that the US role in nation-building in Afghanistan has been both costly and has had limited success. Furthermore, the report stresses that if the US nation-building program is not overhauled it will not be sustainable after the US begins to withdraw its troops.

Al Jazeera’s Inside Story addresses some of the questions surrounding this report while examining some of the key points of the Senate report which showed that 80 percent of US aid has focused on South and Eastern regions leaving only 20 percent for the remaining regions, how misspending of foreign aid has resulted in corruption, and how foreign aid makes 97 percent of the country’s GDP and which has resulted in aid dependency.

Mr. Hekmat Karzai was posed with questions concerning the transition, corruption and issues of nation building in Afghanistan. Mr. Karzai began by stressing that state-building rather then nation-building was the correct word to use when discussing situation in Afghanistan. He explained that there has been mixed results in state-building efforts in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, Mr Karzai also addressed issues of corruption in the Afghan Government stating that the Afghan Government should not be used as escape goat for every time the international community fails to achieve an indicator. He argues that the politics of development were never clearly defined in the Afghan context to begin with, explaining that the international community has worked to serve its own constituencies and how international agencies operating in Afghanistan have created parallel structures that would evidently sustain aid dependency. Thus, though some blame can be placed on the Afghan government, not all the blame should be put on Afghans, exclaimed Mr. Hekmat Karzai.

To watch the complete interview please click on the link below to watch the video broadcasting of “Leaving Afghanistan,” on Al Jazeera.