Press Conference with the President of Afghanistan
20 November 2006
Tony Blair said the prospects for an Afghanistan free of the Taleban and al-Qaeda are "better and brighter".
Speaking on the second day of a trip to the Middle East, the PM praised Afghan President Hamid Karzai for his leadership and courage in recent years.
Parts of this transcript may have been edited
Opening statements
Mr Karzai:
In the name of the most merciful, most compassionate God, media members, ladies and gentlemen, I am very humble and pleased today to welcome His Excellency, a friend of Afghanistan and my personal close friend, His Excellency the Prime Minister of Britain Tony Blair here in Kabul. Prime Minister Tony Blair is one of the friends that have helped Afghanistan continuously to fight terror. I am mindful for the hundreds of dollars and jobs that (inaudible)...Afghanistan, and for all the efforts it is making for Afghanistan to (inaudible) I and His Excellency Mr Prime Minister have spoken on a number of issues that included counter terrorism, our joint efforts about security, reconstruction, about Afghanistan's problems, corruption, narcotics. On behalf of the people of Afghanistan I would like to express my gratitude, and gratefulness to His Excellency for his country's contributions. I would like to repeat it again, I would welcome him again ......
Prime Minister:
Thank you very much Mr President, and Mr President thank you for your kind welcome here. As you know, I have always wanted to come and see you in Kabul and when I landed here my mind went back to the first time when I was at Bagram Airport almost five years ago now and met yourself and some members of your government, but in very, very different circumstances and in a different setting. And the first thing to say is that the progress that Afghanistan has made under your leadership over these past few years has indeed been remarkable. We know the challenges and we can come to those in a moment, but you were telling me I think that the economy and the GDP per head had almost 80% I think increased over these last few years.
Mr Karzai:
The sum total, yes.
Prime Minister:
There is a lot now of reconstruction and development going on in the country. There is some $10.5 billion pledged for that reconstruction which we have got to make sure that we use properly. But we are also here with over 30 other different nations, and that is for one very simple purpose. We believe that Afghanistan, rather than being abused as a haven for terrorists and for the Taleban to oppress people, that Afghanistan and its people deserve the chance to increase their prosperity and to live in a proper democratic state. And I want to recommit ourselves, and I am sure I speak on behalf of the whole international community supporting you, to say that we will be with you in this endeavour, our commitment remains that whatever challenges, whether of security, or reconstruction, or development, we shall be up to meeting those challenges with you. And we know we went through a very difficult period two or three months back, but I think it is also true to say as a result of the work that has been done, not just by American and British and many other forces but also the Afghan government and the Afghan forces, there is a sense of the country moving forward again, so that is very positive.
And Mr President yet again let me pay tribute to your courage and your leadership over these past few years because these are circumstances more challenging than any of us can imagine. But as you rightly were indicating to me again, and as you do every time we meet, however difficult it is the prospects are better and brighter for Afghanistan free of the Taleban and free of al Qaeda.
Mr Karzai:
Absolutely.
Prime Minister:
Thank you Sir.
Mr Karzai:
Thank you Prime Minister.
Question and Answer session
Question:
Mr President, Prime Minister, there is an old Afghan saying I am told that says you in the west have all the watches but we have all the time, the thought being that the Taleban will simply wait until the international community loses its will, loses the desire to be here and then they will come back again. What reassurances can you give your country Mr President that that is wrong? And Prime Minister given the growing doubts in your own country and round the world about the success of this war and the war in Iraq can you be sure that you will stay, and your successor and his successor will stay this fight?
Mr Karzai:
Sir, we indeed have all the time in Afghanistan, but all the time to reconstruct and make life better. In the past five years we have shown in Afghanistan, together with the international community, that while we have all the time, we are also in a hurry, in a hurry to make life better in Afghanistan, and that hurry has given us results. You travelled today, I wonder if you were with the Prime Minister today in Helmand, you took a plane and it took you about an hour perhaps to reach Kabul. You could have also taken a car, a vehicle, and it could have been in Kabul by now, in less than five hours. Now this journey that you could have completed in five hours today, you would not have been able to complete in 36 - 40 hours three years ago. Where you were today in the city of Lashkar Gar, in the past four years you have seen millions of dollars of private endowment and international investment. As we speak right now 4.5 million refugees have returned to Afghanistan in less than four years. While the Taleban were here they were running away from Afghanistan, now they have come back and more are returning as we talk from our neighbourhood and from the rest of the world. The economy has improved so much that the first year, 2002, Afghanistan's growth was 28% and today as it kept improving, if we have rain Afghanistan's economy will definitely be improving, growing by 14%. In 2002 if you had asked me what health services do you have for Afghanistan, probably I would have had no figures or no answers for you. But I can tell you now that in 2002 we provided only 8% of the Afghan population with some form of basic health service. As you and I are talking right now this service has reached 82% of the Afghan population. In 2001 Pakistan's exports to Afghanistan were $25 million annually, today they stand at $1.3 billion. In 2001 an Afghan daily labourer would get a dollar a day, today he or she would get nearly 4 dollars a day, a skilled labourer would get 20 dollars a day or more.
Now to the part of the Taleban and their waiting to return, they were defeated in 2001 in less than a month and a half. Why? Indeed because there was the presence of the international community, indeed because there was the force of the international community, but also very very much because the Afghan people wanted them removed and a new life for them to begin. So one thing, the international community will surely stay with us until we are firmly on our own feet and when Afghanistan is firmly on its own feet no evil force could return to Afghanistan, not then, not now. Bombs and terrorism, that is a different question that nobody can stop, as much as people hate it.
Prime Minister:
I think the question you ask is absolutely the nub of the issue, have we got the will and can the Taleban simply outlast us, outlast the Afghan people? And I think the answer to that is, and I can only speak for myself and what I believe in, but we came to Afghanistan because it was obvious that the problem in Afghanistan had become a problem for the world. We have got to stay committed for as long as it takes for our own security, not just for the sake of the Afghan people. And the second thing is that yes the Taleban have got time, but the Afghan people have also got time, they are not going anywhere, they are not going to be intimidated out of a better future provided they have the support and the vision that is there that the President has outlined and that we will support. So their game of waiting is a game that will not succeed if we show the will and if together we and the Afghan people show that reconstruction and development and economic and social progress can happen as a result of our cooperation and partnership. And the alternative is that we go back to an Afghanistan that wasn't just misery for its people here, but ended up with violence and death being exported round the world, and that is not an alternative any of us should contemplate.
Mr Karzai:
Exactly.
Question:
(inaudible)
Prime Minister:
Well it is important we work with everyone, including all the neighbours of Afghanistan to make sure that we realise we have got a common cause here. But we also take away any temptation of people to join up with the Taleban if we put the emphasis on reconstruction and development and economic progress as well as security. It is a whole picture that we need. But I have got no doubt at all myself that for any neighbour of Afghanistan, anything that encourages the Taleban destabilises the region, that is why it is important to see a common ...
Mr Karzai:
Exactly, exactly.
Question:
Could I ask the Prime Minister first of all, would you acknowledge that the western powers lost focus a little bit in Afghanistan for a while? And could I ask the President, what more would you like to see the major western powers do?
Prime Minister:
I think that, let me put it in a slightly more positive way, the last few months have seen us refocus in a strong way. I mean we have been present and doing things the entire time, but I think certainly from our perspective it is important both now that we show the progress that is being made and re-energise people that this is something that is worth doing, you know we go back to the reasons we are here, the progress that has been made in Afghanistan, and that we have some confidence that together, because of the will of the Afghan people and what we are doing, that the threat can be defeated. I hesitate to use any analogies at all because people will then justifiably point out 20 reasons why they are not applicable, but you look at what Europe went through with the Balkans, in the early 1990s we failed to act, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people died, finally we did act but it takes a long time. These situations often are a long time in the creating and they need to be a long time in the resolving. And so I think now is the right time, and with the Riga Summit coming up for NATO, to bring into sharp focus the need for us to stay with the Afghans in their journey of progress and to rediscover within ourselves the belief and the vision that took us here and that should keep us here until the job is done.
Mr Karzai:
On what Afghanistan want our partners to do is exactly as the Prime Minister described, continue to be with us, focus strongly on building our institutions, especially the army and the police and the judiciary, stay with the reconstruction of Afghanistan and basically continue with us in our process of nation building in all aspects of it.
Question:
Thanks for visiting Prime Minister. You both gentlemen spoke of the Taleban being defeated, but this year alone has been the most violent year in the past five years, over 4,000 people got killed. How can you claim that the Taleban are defeated? And secondly for you Mr Prime Minister, over the past five years Great Britain has been the lead nation in the counter-narcotics, not only have the narcotics and the drugs have not decreased, it has increased and this year alone there was an increase of 60%. Will finally British troops get involved in the counter-narcotics while they are being stationed in Helmand Province where over 40% of the poppy is grown?
Prime Minister:
I think on the counter-narcotics the President is better able to give you the details than me, though as I understand it though there have been problems, and Helmand is one of them where there has been a growth in poppies, there are others where there has been significant reduction and we need to learn the lessons of that. You know you say about the Taleban, look I think it is important to realise that for the Taleban and for al Qaeda and those organisations that are connected with them worldwide that basically share their ideology and ideas, I don't think we should be surprised that they fight back, this is after all, for them to have been ousted from the government of Afghanistan, was a major defeat. Of course they will try to get back in, they will try to use links with the drugs trade indeed to do that, but as I say sometimes when people put to me, because I think there is challenging news here and there is good news here, difficult news and good news, but when people put the difficult news to me back home I often say that if your enemy is fighting you, and they are our enemy, then what is your response? Your response should be to fight them back even harder and with more determination. And so I think one very good message that was given to the Taleban in the Helmand Province in particular over the last few months is that we are also prepared to fight because we believe what we believe in. Now I think that going forward obviously, the big big challenge is the narcotics trade because it was something that was introduced into the country that the Taleban actually exploited and it is going to take us time. On the other hand, as I think the President can give better details of than me, there are examples of provinces where there has been a sharp reduction. Now as I understand it that has often been when there has been also a powerful economic and reconstruction motive put in in order to encourage people to shift into something better, because after all the narcotics industry offers absolutely no future, no true future for people in Afghanistan.
Mr Karzai:
On the question of narcotics, yes certain parts of the country did see an increase last year, but we also have examples of a place like Nangarhar, which was among the three biggest growers of narcotics where the infrastructure improved, where the administration was better, where economic opportunity was better, where road links with the rest of the country and outside of the country were better, we saw that now narcotics is only perhaps 5% of the crop which was 90% before. So there are good and bad examples. Yes, narcotics is a serious problem to Afghanistan's security, to Afghanistan's economy and to the youth of our country, as it is a problem to the youth of the international community. It is also now emerging that it has a serious problem to the youth of our country, addiction is becoming a concern in Afghanistan, for us in Afghanistan whether we have the help of the international community, whether we have the concern of the international community or not, Afghanistan has to fight poppies for its own sake, for a better life of the Afghan people and this struggle will go on. Now to expect this struggle to yield results in a year or two is naïve, that is what I felt in 2001 that we were going to be successful in a year or two, it is a long term struggle, it needs a consistent systematic effort, perseverance and the good implementation of the strategy that we have. So in a number of years we will have a very different picture in Afghanistan.
Question:
I wonder if I could ask both of you what has gone wrong. I appreciate the efforts you are making to make things go right, but the fact of the matter is my colleagues referred to the general death toll, we know that 36 of the 40 plus British lives lost have been lost this year, anyone even on this very brief visit can see the state of security both here in Kabul and in Helmand, and further if we look back to the coalition in 2001 the Prime Minister, Mr Blair has just said that we are all also prepared to fight, isn't the problem that NATO has got a significant number of its contributor nations that actually aren't prepared to fight and have put that in their rules of engagement?
Prime Minister:
I know this is always a difficult thing to get across, but the most important thing is to get across a sense of balance. I don't think anybody disputes the challenges that there are here because of the desire of the Taleban to fight back, we have just mentioned the drugs trade, those are obviously really difficult issues. On the other hand we shouldn't then say well that is the whole picture, you know there is nothing good that is happening, because that is not true either. And I think if you see not just the growth in the economy but actually the change in a city like Kabul, if you think that the Taleban believed that this year they were going to be able to take back control in Helmand and have been unable to do so. You know there are also things that are happening on reconstruction and development that are of a very positive nature. So you have got to balance it up. But I think the most important thing for us, and here is where I think you know a few years back I think there was a sense in the international community, well maybe you know you drive out the Taleban, you change the government in Kabul, there is an election, a political process. I think we are wiser now to the fact that, as I have been saying in recent weeks, this is a generational struggle. Now I am not saying that we remain here in the same way for that length of time, but I am saying that overall the roots of the Taleban, al Queda, this type of global terrorism round the world are deep and where they gained a foothold in a country like Afghanistan it is going to take time to banish that for good. But on the other hand I think there is sufficient sign of progress here that it should give us some hope for the future. And after all as I keep saying to people, well what is the alternative? And part of this I think is a demonstration of will. You are right again that not all forces will be prepared to commit their troops in the way that Britain will do, and we should be thankful that our troops are prepared to be courageous and in the frontline in that way, but for us, not just in Britain but in Europe and if you like you might broadly call the western world, what is the alternative? I mean we came to Afghanistan because actually the sickness and the evil that was here in Afghanistan came to us, that is what happened. How much were the leaders of the world talking about Afghanistan before September 11? Not enough actually, it is a reproach to us that we weren't. But the fact is the reason why the whole attitude changed was because this corruption of politics and ideology and religion that was here visited its effects on all of us. And we have got the same alternative we had five years ago, you either stick with it until the job is done or you don't, and if you don't all you will do is leave it to another generation to sort out. So I am not prepared to do that and all I ask from you guys, and I think this is important for the outside world, is to balance up the challenge and the progress because there is progress as well as challenge.
Mr Karzai:
And to answer ...(inaudible) ... people complain about traffic jams, when a road is blocked for a moment, for a minute, the next television news is on cursing those who have done it because then the traffic jam stays until the next afternoon. Security is a concern in Afghanistan, as it is a concern in the rest of the world, but you just go beyond the cities, you see life moving at a speed that sometimes we can't catch up with, in reconstruction, in development, in kids going to school, in children going to school and all other walks of life. So perhaps the problem is not ... in Afghanistan, in our media, what is it called, in our PR, perhaps we have failed in that, perhaps we have not communicated to you in London or in the rest of the world the achievements in Afghanistan, and that we should set right I hope.
Question:
My question was to Mr Prime Minister Tony Blair. Why does it happen, don't you think that by the turning back of American coalition and forces back to their homeland one ... to fight attacks and such other events. ... and the second part is that the government in force of Pakistan says that we are ... and a centre for terrorists in Pakistan, but other political parties, they don't accept it. What is your opinion? ...
Prime Minister:
First of all as President Musharraf said at our press conference yesterday, in respect of any elements that are in Pakistan that support the Taleban it is important that the Pakistani government take action against them. And I know because of the past there is bound to be a lot of suspicion on both sides of the border, but for Pakistan again there is a future for Pakistan and Afghan relations which can only happen in circumstances where both countries are working against the Taleban. And in respect of your first point, the very reason why the people that we are fighting use suicide bombs and terrorism is because we know that the one weapon they don't have is the support of the people. There was an election here which elected the President. Now these terrorists are the same the world over, what they want to do is to create a situation in which violence drives out proper forms of political expression in which people are unable to have the future they want because the people of violence make it impossible for them to do it. And they are going to try and test the will of NATO and of the coalition as to whether we mean what we say, are we going to stick with it and support the Afghan people in this struggle? And we have got to prove to them that our will is greater than theirs. If we don't do that and if as a result of their terrorism we back away, well we give them a victory. And as I say you know the reason we are all in this situation is because over time we were forced to recognise, we in countries like Britain and in America and in the rest of Europe we were forced to recognise that we could not ignore what was happening in this part of the world because its impact was felt by us. And were we to let the Taleban back, were we to let in any corner of the world this type of evil ideology and terrorism gain control we would just be back facing its consequences in a different way at a later time. And that is why for all the difficulties in this, and it has been very difficult over the past few years, I don't suppose when I became Prime Minister of Britain in 1997, to be absolutely frank about it Mr President, I thought I would be standing here in the centre of Kabul ten years on. I didn't anticipate that. But what has happened has happened and all of us have had to adjust our thinking as a result of it. And the reason why for all the difficulties I have never had any hesitation in respect of this, or in respect of other areas we are involved, is because I don't believe there is any alternative but to fight this and to fight it for as long as it takes and to recognise that in the end we have got to be prepared not just to fight but then to make peace with reconstruction, with political development, with economic progress and show our way is better than theirs, because if we don't show that then their way wins.
Mr Karzai:
Exactly.
