Close
Back
Download NATO’s broadcast-quality video content free of charge
Log in
No account?
Forgot your password?
NATO MULTIMEDIA ACCOUNT
Access NATO’s broadcast-quality video content free of charge
Create an account
Check your inbox and enter verification code
We have sent a verification code to your email address.
.
Enter the code to verify your account. This code will expire in 30 minutes.
You have successfully created your account
From now on you can download videos from our website
Subscribe to our newsletter
If you would also like to subscribe to the newsletter and receive our latest updates, click on the button below.
Reset password
Enter the email address you registered with and we will send you a code to reset your password.
Reset password
We have sent a verification code to your email address.
Enter the code to verify your account. This code will expire in 30 minutes.
Create a new password
The password must be at least 12 characters long, no spaces, include upper/lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.
Your password has been updated
Click the button to return to the page you were on and log in with your new password.
MODERATOR: We will... if you agree, we'll get started. We have two very welcome guests today, one of whom is actually here in the room and hopefully the other one will show up soon. As you know, we have here Minister Çetin, who is the senior civilian representative for NATO in Afghanistan. He's a direct link, of course, to the Secretary General and has very, very good contacts and a lot of influence at the highest level in Afghanistan, helping to shape NATO's and the international community's approach to assisting the Afghan government.
So we're very pleased to have him here today. He briefed two North Atlantic Councils today; one the North Atlantic Council with ISAF contributors, non-NATO ISAF contributors as well; and then in a closed session the North Atlantic Council members themselves to give his political analysis of what has just taken place in Afghanistan and what the future holds for NATO and for the country. And it was a very welcome analysis.
So he has graciously agreed to come and speak to you as well, so I've asked him just to say a few words to open it up and then we'll open it up to you for questions. Minister.
HIKMET ÇETIN (NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan): Right. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very pleased to be here again.
Well, we had excellent election in Afghanistan. That historical moment and this is the first direct election that Afghanistan ever had throughout the history. And this is the one thing. The secondary, of course, that was very safe and secure elections. There was very small incidents in the south and eastern part of Afghanistan and the rest was very peaceful. And the one thing that of course was very important that when I have seen that women and men lining up on the election day and try to vote for the future.
Well, the one thing that I'd like to say, well the Afghan people wants to forget about the past. They are very much tired of the past. They want to look at the future. And that was one of the result of the election we had seen.
And for that, of course, we have to (inaudible)... NATO and international community, they have to respect and they have to support Afghan people for their journey for the future. And for that, of course, Afghanistan and Afghan people will need more support, politically, militarily and economically. Because now we have election, the election is behind us, we have 99.4 percent already been counted, and Karzai was elected as the president. Now we have elected president of Afghanistan.
I think this is the beginning of the story, not the end. Because for the people they are expecting many things from the elections. Otherwise election will not mean anything to the people of Afghanistan, because Afghan people first will expect that election will bring more security to the country and secondly, of course, the main important they will expect that security will bring a strong government, powerful government, and also they will expect that election will bring more economic and social benefit to them.
Because if they don't see that after the election, their daily life is getting better, at least the hope it will get better, I think the election process will not mean anything to Afghan people, because they will expect the education, more education, more health, more business, more jobs and this is, again, very important for international community.
We will not... international community will not let Afghanistan alone, because... and I hope the international community will not make another mistake again in Afghanistan. Which they have done it after the occupation of the Soviet Union, of course Afghanistan left alone. And this is very important now. And now this is the very critical period because the President Karzai will form a new government. The new government now will be different one, because there is no excuse now. The first government, and until now, and international community, it was some kind of large core mission in the government.
Again, of course, this government should be very critical one. It should be unity government. The unity has become very important because the election, as you have seen, we have a candidate, and with each name ethnic group. I think only Karzai had... received vote from many Pashtun as well, but if we look at the other candidates, mainly, for example, Karnin and mainly from Tajik, Tajik groups, mainly Hazara groups and thus mainly Uzbeks and maybe partly Turkman votes.
And now to integrate this people, this candidate and ethic groups within the unity government, or a vote-based government is very, very important job for Karzai.
The country needs peace, the country needs security and for that, of course, you have to have the broad-based government, but at the same time workable, effective government as well.
And now of course, I don't want to take too much of your time, now I have General Py with us also, and now of course the next is parliamentary election. And at the moment the plan is to have parliamentary elections sometimes in April, 23rd of April, but this has not been decided yet because there are many technical problems in Afghanistan. Because that election is the more difficult, more complex one.
And in this election the terrorist group wanted to disrupt the election... the process itself. The target was the process, democratic process, election process itself. At the parliamentary election we will have thousands of candidates. There will be internal problems among the candidates, among the leaders, warlords, Shi'a(?) members, and so on and so forth. It is very, very critical and complex issue. And we would need more security support for that kind of stuff. And NATO will continue to support the election process.
And also the next things for NATO now is to expansion, to go Stage 1... Stage 2 now and at the same time, of course, provide security for the parliamentary election. This is the key issue for NATO now and I hope that the force generation conference will start very soon and... but I don't want to go in detail of this issue, because we have my good friend now, Jean-Louis Py with us, he will be more capable to answer this kind of question.
Well, I think I'm going to stop here maybe. The question will be better to go in detail.
MODERATOR: Well, let me quickly turn over then with that excellent presentation to General Py. General Py is commander of ISAF and has been since, I believe, early August, where he was, I think, put into a very challenging position immediately with the elections coming up and he's obviously, and history will demonstrate this, carried this off with aplomb. This was a very significant success, not only for Afghanistan, but for ISAF under General Py's command.
So General, if you would, a few opening remarks, and then we'll turn it over to questions. Thank you for being with us.
LIEUTENANT GENERAL JEAN-LOUIS PY (Commander, International Security Assistance Force, ISAF): Thank you very much. Opening remarks, I won't be very long because I think the Minister has already touched almost every point which are on the table today. Well election a great success. The Afghan people, they wanted to build up these elections. They wanted to have a better future, to choose it, and they succeeded. And I tell you it was so nice to see after the election going down the streets in Kabul and seeing all these people showing their cards, you know, very proud of what they did for the first time, etc.
It was really a fantastic issue and it was a great satisfaction for us also to see how these people could react in these conditions after 23 years of war. It was tremendous.
There was a great deal of coordination during the elections. We realized to between the table, UNAMA, police forces, Afghan national army, ISAF, in German centre, operational centre we opened at least a fortnight before the elections and we ran that very cautiously and if I may say, intelligently, in order to have a common picture of what is going on in the country, and it was really a real success, giving us some ideas for the future, because as Hikmet Çetin said the problem will be more complex. We will have to build four different types of elections, upper chamber, lower chamber, provincial and district level.
The first thing to do will be to check the boundaries of the district, because this is not done. To have a district level census of the people, because they will have to vote in their own district. To register the different candidates and the parties of course. And there could be up to 10,000, something like that. To check there are not... they are clear people and they can really be registered as candidates and not being pursued by human rights or things like that.
Afterwards they will have to organize locally and technically the election by districts, and to try to find out how they are going to count on the spot, to give the results, international observation. I mean, a lot of technical issues which are not solved today. Of course we have started to work on that, but this is a very difficult topic.
That's about all I could tell you as an opening remark. I'd rather answer the questions now.
MODERATOR: Let's start immediately.
Q: Nouvelles Atlantique. Mes questions pour le Général Py. J'aurais voulu savoir d'abord les troupes supplémentaires de l'OTAN qui sont venues et sont présidentielles. J'aurais voulu savoir est-ce qu'elles sont toujours là? Est-ce qu'elles sont reparties? Est-ce quelles vont repartir et quel est le bilan avec les processus des générations des forces pour les élections parlementaires?
PY: Les forces qui ont été attribuées en complément pour les élections sont toujours là. Elles repartiront sous peu après que les résultats aient été proclamés. Nous n'avons pas de tailles exacte mais je sais que certaines motions sont relativement pressées de récupérer les forces mises à la disposition.
Et bien entendu nous sommes maintenant dans le planning de la phase suivante pour l'élection parlementaire. C'est de déterminer exactement quel est le volume de force qui sera nécessaire. Sachant que ces élections une fois de plus se présenteront d'une façon différente comme l'a dit Hikmat Çetin, c'est-à-dire que, ça ne sera plus une attaque en règle contre le processus démocratique lui-même; mais on risque d'avoir des points chauds un peu partout dans le pays et où les gens localement vont s'affronter pour pouvoir être celui qui va être élu à l'élection.
Et vous savez bien que dans ces pays là quand que ça se passe un peu comme ça, la tendance est d'avoir recours tout de suite à la violence et la tendance est d'éliminer celui qui est en face. Donc on voit là des points chauds, des points de tensions éparpillés sur la (inaudible) du territoire mais restant à un niveau raisonnable et surtout local. Ça ne sera pas une en mon sens... c'est la façon dont je le vois, ça ne sera pas une levée de bouclier si vous voulez contre le processus lui-même.
Q: Est-ce que ça veut dire qu'il faudra plus de troupes et plus longtemps si c'est un processus justement de stabilisation de certaines régions?
PY: Non je ne peux pas vous dire aujourd'hui comment on va procéder parce que je n'ai pas la liste complète. Il faut voir comment on peut réagir face à ça. Alors est-ce que ce sera une prems permanente ou bien est-ce que ce sera des forces de réactions rapides qu'ont déploierais, après des renseignements sur les foyers de tension. Non je ne peux pas vous dire. Je ne sais pas encore.
Q: L'Agence France Presse, une question... a question for Mr. Çetin, please. With hindsight, and concerning the fact that there were very few incidents for these elections, but a tremendous momentum that we saw during the election, do you think it would have been wiser, better or... I don't know exactly the right word, to have both elections, the parliamentary and the presidential at the same time, rather than as the decision was taken, to put them off... to have the two separate elections?
ÇETIN: Well, I think it was planned at the beginning that they will have both election at same time, and especially when I talked to President Karzai, several times he said we must have... we should have two election at same time. And it was at the beginning that was the idea. Announcing during the Benin Conference, and even later on. But for technical reasons, mainly for technical reason, because as you know, UNAMA, United Nations is organizing the elections and there is a joint election body.
From these two organizations, the UN and election body, because of technical reason they went to the government. They say that we cannot have both election at the same time. And the government had to take a decision and when they see that technically they cannot hold the two election at same time and they had to make the decision to separate those two elections.
Of course, it would be wonderful if we could have both elections at the same time, but unfortunately, because of technical reason it didn't happen.
Q: Mark John from Reuters. As you say, it's perhaps too early to talk about specific troop numbers at this stage, but would we be right in assuming from what you've both just been saying about the complexity of the process, that we would, in fact, be talking about the substantially increased troop... over troop strength for the parliamentary elections?
PY: I wouldn't say that. I mean, I think clearly we have to go deep into the planning of this new operation and to measure exactly which kind of level of security we are going to have. If you look at the provinces I'm in charge of, that is the nine provinces in the north mainly, we didn't have any incident during the voter registration, a single incident. And we had one incident or two in the northern areas during the election day.
That means that there was a level of security which is quite comfortable for us and this really(?), it allowed us to have a level of forces not that consequent. And founded mostly on the reaction forces, high reaction forces.
If the level of security remains the same, and if we are supported by the people of Afghanistan, I'm sure that we might find out that the best thing is to have a concept which will be similar to the one we had during the previous election.
Q: I would like to know if there is any time frame that we can mention relating to phase two of the expansion. What is now the time frame that you are thinking of? And what is the percentage of territory that a PRT can claim to control really, because we speak of coverage of the north, but the country is so vast, so large and so I don't know if there is any percentage of cover... a real coverage that NATO can claim on the northern side.
PY: Well, on the first question, you know that there is what we call a Combined Joint Statement of Requirement of Forces for the next phase of the expansion. This is going to go through a thorough process of the force generation by the end of November, and therefore if other nations provide what is required for expansion there is no problem for expanding the timeline... the time they want... they decide to start the expansion.
Taking into account that it will be more difficult to start to deploy forces during the winter than it is during the other seasons of the year.
So hopefully that will be done before the parliamentary election, but we have no clue of that. It depends on the filling up of the Statement of Requirement and the capacity to deploy it in bad weather conditions.
Going to the second question, related with the influence of the PRT. The thing you have to recall is a PRT are to be considered within the framework of the mission ISAF has. And the mission is to support the central government. This is not a fighting mission. We are forces for self-defence of the PRTs. And what we do there is we support the governor, the local governor, the chief of police and their people, in order to increase the security locally. And we support the local administration in order to start reconstruction over there. With emergency project, mainly scenic project of the level of ISAF, just like providing water purification in some areas, providing electricity, renewing hospitals and things which are really basic.
Before the government can take over with the national priority programs and put some more investment into the different provinces, because up to now it's more concentrated in Kabul than in the provinces.
ÇETIN: One... can I add one thing, of course? If you talk to people in the northern part of the country they will not ask you... PRT to provide security because that's quite a secure area. They will ask for more support for, as the general said, for reconstruction for small business or some other things of course. For example, when you see that the road in the city is not well asphalted they ask PRT because it's what they do.
When security has been achieved of course, the many more the civilian side, the civilian part of PRT more important than military part of PRTs.
Q: In this press conference there are so many holes in every answer that you would try to ask for. Could you elaborate on that, what okay, any question?
Shouldn't we be speaking about two Afghanistans. The north that is very peaceful, very manageable, and everybody agrees that the international forces, ISAF, is welcome and we agreed, I mean, the Afghanis agreed with ISAF and there is no problem, as has just been said. And the second, the south of the party, the country, and the east of the country that is very hard, very difficult, very unmanageable, very war-like country. So shouldn't we be speaking of these Afghanistans? And how are we going to deal with these two differing requirements of forces and situation, dealing with the elections?
And one more question, if I may? What about these putting together of ISAF and the American-led coalition that provoke with some mature reaction against the (inaudible)...
PY: I think we must not make a difference between the North and the South. It is mandatory to avoid this, if I may say, this ethnic breakdown between the north and the south, because this is something we do not want in the future, obviously. It happens that the country is geographically split in two parts, the north and the south, by the Hindu Kush which is a real barrier between the north and the south. It happened that there is more insecurity in the south than there is in the north.
But I think also, and you have also two different operations. One mainly in the north, which is ISAF, and the second one, Operation Enduring Freedom in the south. And the goals of both operations are different. The first one is to support the government of Afghanistan. The second one is to fight against international terrorism.
So there are a lot of differences like that. But I think today, and I think I'm not wrong in talking... in saying that the next government will respect an ethnic balance in this constitution in the future.
I think today we have to think as a single country, which is looking for its future, whatever the difficulty is, whatever the threat encounter is, and we're really willing to remain a country.
And this is, in my opinion, overpassing the differences in the north and the south.
Q: I was thinking in practical terms.
PY: Yeah.
Q: It's not the same dealing with problems in the north than in the south.
PY: It is absolutely true. I mean, it is absolutely true, because as I told you, we have PRTs in the north, but not a lot of forces because the environment is secure. And in the south the environment is not that secure, so we have more forces.
ÇETIN: Well, I think just to add some few words, because first of all, of course, we should not forget the Taliban movement comes from the south. And mainly the Pashtun movement, and secondly of course, still exist in that part of the country, because there are madrassas in Afghanistan... in Pakistan and those madrassas of course, producing or educating still Talibans every year.
And the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is 1700 kilometres long and mountains area is very difficult area, and still terrorists like al-Qaeda, Taliban, they are all living there.
But in addition to that, of course, it's been discussed now that sometime in the future we will have one command, maybe two mission. And this has been discussed last time in unofficial... informal meeting of the defence ministers in Romania and now the military people are working on some options.
And we may have two missions, two missions, but one command, and this one single... Well, this is my personal... I'm not a military man. I cannot understand how one can have two different command in one country. I know that there's not agreement on this, but this is my personal view, that it would be better to have two different mission again, but maybe one command.
And especially if NATO is faced with this, of course, now expansion Stage 2, after Stage 3, even maybe to Stage 4, what do we do, of course. In that case NATO will be responsible for the whole country.
MODERATOR: In terms of the state of play of where we are I think you're probably aware that the military authorities will soon be tasked with developing options to look at the relationship between these two missions and how to ensure greater coherence or synergy and unity of purpose, and that will be coming... they will be tasked that in the coming days and weeks, and then of course they'll present options. I think all of this will be done in the context of the defence ministers meeting in Nice next February.
I think we should safely go around the table. Could you please identify yourselves.
Q: (inaudible)...in Delhi. General Py, I would like to ask you what's the real obstacle not to have the unified command in Afghanistan? And what's your opinion on this new decision on rotating command on ISAF, and do you believe it's a correct decision and idea? Thank you.
PY: Well, when ISAF commands there's a choice which has been made was to rotate high reaction corps on this command. In my opinion it's a very good idea, because you can't have six high reaction corps ready to do something and not doing anything. So when you rotate them on an operation like that you are committing them for at least one year, because they have the visibility to prepare themselves and then to be employed without a drop-down in the efficiency of the mission.
And this is what happened with Eurocorps High Command. That is to say, we were aware in January this year that we might take over. And we started preparing this mission. Therefore, when we arrive we almost knew everything about the... everything about the theatre, and we were really ready after the exercise, etc. etc. to take over in very short delay without a drop-down in efficiency.
I think it's a very good solution. Not only because these staff belong to the NATO common structure, so you don't have to rotate communication, you don't have to rotate infrastructure, etc. and it's very easy, fantastic training for high response corps.
On the command, I mean, you have many options. I mean, really you have many options. It depends on which kind of criteria you choose to make a decision. My understanding today is there are two different mandates. And whatever happens. One day you will have to make only one mandate so it's a political issue today to decide whether... how you are going to make that. But if you want really to merge both operations, in my opinion, it should start by a political solution. You will have to put both mandates under the same hat.
MODERATOR: And certainly for the moment that's... that discussion is not for today. We have two distinct missions at present and two distinct mandates and all that's been... of course this would have to be the end result if that were the choice. For now different countries have very different positions on these issues, and the first step is for the military to present the options, and that's where we are now.
Q: It's probably the question to Mr. General. General, so for the last dozens of years it established a good historical tradition to use Tajikistan border, the border for smuggling of drugs from Afghanistan to Tajikistan and further to Russia and etc. etc.
Did you do something special to enforce the border to protect, trafficking of drugs to the territory of Europe, through Tajikistan? And you also mentioned one of the most known development regions for which money... from which sources they are doing this business.
PY: Well, this is not part of our mandate, clearly. This is an Afghan problem, but what we may well... what we are doing today is to support them in trying to tackle this issue. This area, supporting them in training their border police, in increasing their means, in changing their methods and also changing some of the people because you might know that a lot of local people are sometimes corrupted into this traffic, so... Well, I mean, when I was saying sometime it's 90 percent only. So, we're meeting them there on this topic, but you know also that Afghanistan is a very enclaved country and the problem we're having with the Tajikistan border, you can also have it with Uzbekistan border, with Iranian border and with the Pakistani border. The only border where we don't have any problem might be the Chinese border. So, it's so far away and it's only 80 kilometres.
ÇETIN: Of course, our objective is to help, to assist Afghan government and Afghan people, that Afghanistan should get ownership of these things, because they are not going to stay out there forever. And as you know, we have supporting the five... the five security sector force. An objective, of course, to get Afghan ownership, Afghan ownership of the national army. The objective to have a 70,000 Afghan army.
Now at the moment we're at about 15,000 now, being trained. And objective of course to reach 62,000 Afghan police; 50,000 normal police, 12,000 border police, we are talking about. And to help Afghan people, Afghan government to have, of course, the judicial reform. They had nothing, of course, at the beginning. And also to support Afghan people, for Afghan government to have DDR, Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration of the militias and also come to an equity.
And the more Afghan ownership the less will be our job in Afghanistan. And the things are moving. And when I was there nine months ago they have only 6000 trained national army, now they have 15,000. They have couple of thousand national police, now they have 30,000, 40,000 trained national police, and our objective now, of course, as NATO, to support more, to assist them and for example, SSRs, for security sector reforms.
MODERATOR: I think we have time for one quick question and that's it.
Q: Associated Press. My is quick, but it was originally for General Py, since it's a military question, but maybe you can help me. It was just to know how many troops are necessary for the phase 2 expansion of ISAF into the western section?
ÇETIN: I'm becoming military person. First of all, I think the critical issue is national caveats. If you ask me you want more troops, more troops with more caveats, or less troops with less caveats. I would prefer to have less troops with less caveats. This is a very important issue, because I think the number is not important. The important thing to have a flexibility. To use troops on the ground.
But that is very critical issue. We have mentioned both of us today during the NAC meeting that I think we have to minimize the national caveats because this is much more important than the number. What ISAF is going to do, which we have sent thousands of soldiers there, deployed soldiers, with national caveats you can't do anything. And so that is of course the one important thing, to solve that problem, to minimize national caveats, to give flexibility to commander of ISAF to use forces on the ground.
And of course, the other things is to be studied in the military headquarters what we need in the second... next... the expansion for Stage 2. But, the one thing in our situation, the stability and security in the west is much, much better. After removing of Ismail Khan and deploying the national army to Herat and now they have national army, now they have a court in Herat and deployment of national army, national police in the middle of Ismail Khan the situation in the west, security is much better than before and that the number of course is... that is completely technical. An issue that will be discussed during the Force Generation.