Interview: Talking to Afghan President Karzai

(5 of 7)

Ok, let me give you an example. Last week I went to Jowzjan province. I met a 11-year-old girl who had been raped about six months ago. Her family had to pay bribes to pursue the case in courts. And her sister told me, "Under the Taliban time, that man would have been executed. We want the Taliban back because they gave us justice."
The Taliban did provide that sort of justice. They were much better in that way. Yes, that is true.

So you are falling behind in a competition for hearts and minds with a regime that was one of the most horrific in recent history?
Unfortunately, yes.

So how do you rectify this?
By improving, and by having the full backing by some of our allies, which in some cases has not been there. And if you give me the name of the girl who was raped, and her information, I will deal with the situation tomorrow.

General McKiernan has said that the Taliban are resurgent, and this is causing problems for Afghanistan. But one of the reasons they are gaining ground is because people are rapidly losing faith in your government. They see it as ineffective, corrupt and lacking justice. How do you defend your record in power?
I don't think the Afghan people would prefer the Taliban to the current government. They have reduced faith in the government, yes. Definitely. But if you ask them if they have an alternative to this government, they will say "No." The Taliban will never be in the eyes of the Afghan people an alternative to this government. There are areas in which we have done well. Like security. Corruption is a different case. And this government is doing its best on corruption. With the money that is coming in; with the presence of so many international players, with the NGOs, with the security firms, the contractors, the this, the that, it could have been, it should have been much worse.

It could have been much better.
I don't think so. Under the circumstances, no. Take the number of players into account. The Afghan government takes the responsibility for the money that comes through us. Not for the money that has come through the donors, the agencies.

But what about the corruption in the police?
Corruption in the police is not hurting Afghanistan as much as corruption in the contract process from the donors.

I don't see that. The police are the government's first contact with its citizens. That is the reason why the people are losing faith in your government.
I am sure of it. Look, these are the same police that are dying in heavy numbers every day, defending this country. And this police [force] was not paid more than $20 a month [each] until last year. It was an extremely poverty stricken country. On this the Afghan people warned me in 2004, they came to me and said president, we have no police, and I realized it with our partners in the international community right there, on a daily basis. And we didn't get the right answer. We only began to work with our allies on the question of police and its reform, and improvement, and proper payment in 2007. So from 2004 to 2006, our cries went unheard, but we kept talking. We didn't make it public, but we were talking. Therefore the police should not be blamed, they should be praised.

And the Ministry of Interior (MOI)? Another notoriously corrupt institution?
The MOI has done a lot to improve itself. It is a lot better than two years ago.

That's not saying much, look what it was starting from.
It's not their fault. Can we blame Afghanistan for having been so badly destroyed? And then say look where we started from? When we started in 2002 we had no roads, so should we blame Afghanistan for having had no roads?

But the MOI is different, they are your representatives. If the MOI is corrupt, you are perceived to be corrupt.
This is what we have. This is the environment we have. It is not acceptable, but we are systematically trying to improve it. Together with the international community. All of those heavy guys that are sitting now with the MOI have been checked by the United Nations before they were appointed, for the past two years. We have gone through all the steps of reform. I'm not saying all the steps were right. Some things done in the name of reform were not reform. They caused us a lot of troubles. Like throwing too many police away, police that were trained, that were kicked out by the reform process.