Afghan elections (1): 2004 - 2014

Four pictures that show the enthusiasm of the Afghan voter registration and election campaign in Kandahar, a former Taliban fiefdom. Mind you though: these pictures are from 2004, when Hamid Karzai was elected first time after the Petersberg interim. Back then, the Afghan people were not less enthusiastic than today. Today though the Afghan public opinion is more weary of fraud and corruption though than ten years ago. Do they believe in the slogans of the presidential and provincial candidates nevertheless? Not more or less than in any other country probably. The political game, at any time, obviously serves to incarnate or embody the hopes of people. Others may seem disillusioned. I just came across a university professor this morning in Kabul who very strictly said he is not going to vote. - - - - - - - - Having said this, Afghan media take an active role in trying to make the election process transparent. Pajhwok for instance, Afghanistans major news agency, has put up a website under the name of Afghans vote. Voters are invited to send in their stories and critical observations via the social media, sms, facebook, twitter or small formated videos. The hope is that their contributions from the 34 provinces all over would add to help prevent the wide range of fraud and vote rigging that occured in the 2009 election. As in 2004 and 2009 there is this time an equally flourishing business of voter cards. Some media have reported of some 12.5 million voters for an assumed number of beteen 18 to 20 million voter cards. On the other hand independent control and complaint bodies are rather slightly better equipped than in the 2009 elections. Some Afghan media indeed suggest that with the wide range of publicized media attention on the campaign, a number of polls and surveys and a promise not to repeat what has so drastically darkened the socio-political landscape five years ago, serve as indicators that history will this time have a different outcome.

In search of an academic future: Afghan universities

Together with today's international Women's day, NGOs and governments have highlighted the lack of access to education in many countries, Afghanistan included. My paper in ther Berlin Die Tageszeitung this week looks at the pace at which private universities in Afghanistan are mushrooming. While public universities in Kabul and in the provinces face serious allegations of corruption, the private academic sphere is subject to a competition in which politics partly mix with swift economical interests or gains rather than with a long time investment for the new generation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Niamatullah Ibrahimi, researcher, founder and co-director of AfghanistanWatch, has had a look at the private Afghan universities recently in the national context. I interviewed him on the subject: - In how far is the universitarian system in crisis ? There is a pressure on the higher education sector. For the first time in Afghan history we see a massive extension of primary and secondary education. Which means pupils are graduating and are applying for university seats. Directly after the fall of the Taliban in 2002, we had about 7.000 students in six universities across the whole country. Now, in 2014, we have about 250.000 students both in public and private universities. And the state system can only absorb a part of it. We have 76 private institutes of higher education by now. All of them with about 50.000 students, and with 4.000 teachers employed in this rapidly expanding sector. And because the public sector cannot meet this expansion, the private sector is both needed and also encouraged by the state to shoulder some of the responsabilities that the public system cannot accomplish. // - Are lecturers teaching at the universities of a B.A or a M.A. Level in general? The Afghan regulation for the sector of private education, is in principle setting very high standards. For example, lecturers at the higher private universities should at least have a master degrees. But the question is, whether these criteria can be enforced. The sudden mushrooming of private universities in Kabul and other cities needs monitoring. But the department for private education with the ministry of higher education, which is responsible for the oversight and registration of the private sector, has only a 17 persons staff for all the 76 private universities, 50.000 students and 4.000 teachers. This staff alone is assigned to do the registration of new universities, follow the migration of students from one university to the other and issue a lot of certification and documents – an incredible huge task for a small department with this number of people. // - Everything is political in Afghanistan. What interest groups do we see? One important risk for the future of the higher education sector is that the private institutes might become an extension of religiuos and political patronage networks. Politically and religiously influential figures see it as a very easy way of extending their support for the educated class to benefit them. You open a university and you attract people. And you try to promote your particular form or lines of political or religious ideology and thinking. This is of course not very healthy for the future of the country. Because the students are exposed to one line of thinking at one institute rather than being exposed to critical or alternative thinking within and outside of the university. This can perpetuate the old religious and ideological divides among the emerging educated class. And it can lead to new fragmentation among them. // - Some of the private universities are said to be under the influence of new businessmen? Yes. They are people who have invested in higher education for political reasons. Others have invested in universities out of commercial interests. Businessmen or commercial landlords. Modern businessmen invest in higher education to make money. Some of the investors don't follow a long time horizon or strategy. They invest as if they open a shop. They look for benefits within six months or a bit more. Get a benefit after each semester, or you have lost. This expectation may mean to undermine the ability of a long term planing and of an insitute being able to grow over a period of many years. // -What land- or warlords and Taliban figures are engaged in the private higher education ? There is an interesting group of people who have opened institutes of higher learning. Former Taliban also, inluding Mullah Wakil Muttawakil, the former foreign minister, and Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan. They have opened the Salam private institute of higher education in Kabul. // - How does the curriculum look in such an institute? The new thing about it is that they have admitted a significant number of female students. This is happening on their own conditions. Women are behind the burka, there is no interaction between male and female students. I have my concerns on this. I am – in general – concerned about the radicalization of the youth. // - Why is there a demand from females for an institute of former Taliban? Certain conserative families of course would like to get their daughters to get educated. And they cannot or do not want to send them to institutes where boys and girls would sit in the same class. Which is not new on the other hand. We have had co-education in an open form in the sixties. It has been happening then, and is happening now again. But there was an interval of course. The Taliban tried to separate classes based on gender. But now, after 2001 and the international community, we are able to have it again. // - Other figures suggest a brain drain of the scholarshipers abroad though? Yes, there is a significant brain drain happening, unfortunately. I am talking of Afghan professionals. But the same is happening with educated persons and students who are leaving. Be it because they have current problems or are afraid of the situation to come after 2014. There is people who simply pay smugglers to get out of Afghanistan. At the same time, in comparison to 2001/2002, Afghanistan has a much larger educated class, and an expanding one. Despite the fact that we are loosing some very capable brains at a very crucial time for Afghanistan, I think that we are witnessing the rise of a much larger new educated class. We have about 5.000 young people studying in India at the moment. Another 15.000 study in other countries, starting with Pakistan and Iran, but also Europe and the Western countries. Returning or not after a scholarship is a big issue. But even if some stay away, they are being replaced by people who are graduating now in the Afghan universities in a growing number. // - How serious is the risk of a middle class of educated people leaving with 2014? The risk is there, but not because of what ou mean. I am concerned about the problems of the middle class for other reasons. The kind of progressive middle class that has emerged is directly or directly linked with the military or civilian international aid. At the same time, it has not sufficient links with the economy of Afghanistan. A am speaking of a middle class that earns its own living through the national economy. This is I think the bigger threat to the Afghan the educated class than some people leaving the country. // - What ist the western role in this ? I think western countries have ignored the reconstruction of the Afghan economy. The western countries have spend a lot of money on state building and infrastructure projects. But the revival of the Afghan economy, in particular the agricultural and industrial sectors, have been largely forgotten. What you have now are economic bubbles that have emerged around the military or civilian foreign presence, both of them having no links with the traditional Afghan economy. How will they earn their money? If the international military or civil institutions leave the country, they will loose their source of income. So here we have a crisis. // - Does this make the bed of extremists? I am afraid that an economical shock is likely to happen. It can significantly contribute to a detrioration of the security situation. If there would be a sudden collapse of the Afgan economy, for instance with a lot of people loosing their jobs, the Afghan government not capable of paying its expenses, prices going up and the Afghan government unable to maintain the stability of its currency – all of this can have a very destabilizing effect. Or look in the provinces: The PRTs (provincial reconstruction teams) were such an important economic pilar in many provinces. Now you see them suddenly closing, together with their funds for reconstructoin of stabilization for the regions. This means a sudden rise in unemployment. Many of the political groups that have taken a profit with it suddenly have nothing to do.

Then and now: the Battle for Afghanistan

Hamid Karzai – western media speculate - does not want to be remembered as a kind of modern Shah Shuja in the records of history books. Being compared to the king who owed his throne to the dramatically failed intervention of the British Empire 170 years ago would be tantamount to treason in the eyes of his own people. The first Anglo-Afghan war, historians agree, has left behind a good range of documents in British, Indian, Pakistani and Afghan Archives. Some of them are incorporated in the dari-speaking literature. But rarely so far have western authors attempted to systematically evaluate Afghan sources of the time, following to William Dalrymple. In his voluminous tome of 500 pages the author, whose ancestors fought in the Anglo-Afghan war, tells the story of the return of Shah Shuja on the Afghan throne and the battle of the British crown and the East India Company for Afghanistan. Dalrymple draws differences and parallels with today's war and conflict, naming the intervention of 2001 as it developed itself an "occupation of the 21st Century”. Than as now in fact, political geography accompanied by short-lived military strategies have been put in place and failed strikingly. The same goes for the ignorance and absence of knowledge about Afghanistan's tribes, their reasons and motivations to take up arms. // “The parallels”, Dalrymple writes, “are not just anecdotal, they aer substantive. The same battles were continuing to be fought out in the same place 170 years later under the guis of new flags, new ideologies and new political puppeteers. The same cities were garrisoned by foreign troops speaking the same languages, and were being attacked from the same rings of hills and the same high passes.” The book turns around the relationship of Shah Shuja and William Macnahghten, the commander of the British troops and representative of the East India Company. Analogies between Hamid Karzai and the military leadership of ISAF do not seem accidental. At some point in the military campaign, Shuja is provided an own royal force, containing a lot of British officers: “I am not personally acquainted with many of the officers in the force. Nor do I know the duties they perform. They do not even seem to know that they are my soldiers.” The British finally march into Afghan land over the sidepathes of the Hindu Kush and from the South: thousands of officers with their servants, followed by 4,500 Indian sepoys and a 15,500-men staff. Each of the British officers with a dozen or more camels at their service, equipped with boxes full of tobacco, wine, brandy and other luxury goods. Similarities to today's way of western living in Kabul here again immediately come up. // After entering the captial in early 1840 and Shah Shuja being re-inthroned as the new and old king, the honeymoon quickly turns into blank refusal. One reason is due to the sheer size of the army and its followers, quickly turning their presence into a nightmare for the local population: “Kabul already had a discreet red light district in teh quarter occupied by Indian musicians and dancers close to the walls of the Bala Hisar. But there were not nearly enough Indian rundis around to cope with the demand created by the garrisson of 4.500 sepoys and 15.500 camp followers, and a growing number of Afghan women seem to have made themselves available for a short but profitable ride into the cantonment. Indeed this became so common that the British began to compose rhymes about the easy availabiltiy of Afghan women: “A Kabul wife under burkha cover. Was never known without a lover.” // Dalrmyple, according to his own words, has discovered a good deal of primary sources while walking through the markets of the Old City in Kabul for his research. He found several tomes of what turned out to be precious accounts on the Anglo-Afghan war at at small shops in the bazaar, he writes, accounts that Afghan migrating families of bourgeois or noble origin would leave behind in the 1970s and 80s. Based on these worksm the first Anglo-Afghan war should perceived somewhat different, the author claims: 'The Afghan side with clearly contoured leading figures, all human beings with feelings, individual viewpoints and their own proper motivations. Quite in contrast to British sources that represent the leaders of the Afghan insurgency as undifferentiated and as traitors, bigoted or fanatical.' Far from depicting the Afghans as bloodthirsty savages, his book is precious for it portrays both sides with the look of the others. Something crucially missing today when it comes to analyze the history of the years after 2001 and how Afghan analysts and historians see it. // Dalrymple lives in Delhi today, with a critical eye on the current conflict, a Great Game bis, after the big game of the Imperial powers in the 19th Century, with Afghanistan as a buffer zone between England and Russia. And today?"Only when all are dead, the Great Game will be over. Not before", says Kim, the hero in Rudyard Kipling's novel. This can be long ahead. Towards the end of the book, Dalrymple recalls a meeting with a tribal elder of the Ghilzai Pashtuns who looks int 2014 any beyond: " These are the last days of the Americans. Next it will be China."

Us and them

While there is a dispute in the English speaking media after the condemnable attack on the Libanese restaurant La Taverna on the legacy of its owner Kamel Hammade (see here and here), Jeffrey Stern in his piece goes beyond his personal experiences with the restaurant to ask himself about the relationship and behavioural tendencies of westerners and Afghans in the context of Kabul. I found his text interesting since I am partly under the impression that the issue is hardly commented more recently, the reason lying in the all that goes togehter with the partly withdrawal of foreign forces and the impulse of western media to try and portray a picture not to grim if not successful of the past years of intervention. All of us who have been working in Afghanistan over the past years or decades have witnessed the sacred sense of hospitality Stern speaks about. Also quite rightly, there is more than one argument to continue and support the Afghans with view to the promises Western governments have made and the risk of seeing lots of programs and endeavours avorted before they can actually reach to a tangible result. A number of us have had to report in past assigments on foreign military causing grief to the local population, with incidents that have sparked negative results and headlines and contributed to a change on how foreigners, particularly western military but also civilians more generally are perceived by the average Afghan. Kabul is special in the sense that public encounters carry all kind of deeper effects. Relatively early in the conflict, Barnett Rubin wrote in his blog after an attack on the Serena Hotel: „Collectively we have generated an infrastructure serving only our needs that dwarfs the infrastructure provided for Afghans. The infrastructure is the most visible part of the aid system to Afghans. Projects may mature in a few or many years, but right now Afghans see the guest houses, bars, restaurants, armored cars, checkpoints, hotels, hostile unaccountable gunmen, brothels, videos, CDs, cable television, Internet cafes with access to pornography, ethnic Russian waitresses from Kyrgyzstan in Italian restaurants owned by members of the former royal family and patronized by U.S. private security guards with their Chinese girlfriends and Aghan TV moguls and traffic jams caused by the proliferation of vehicles and exacerbated by 'security measures' every time a foreign or Afghan official leaves the office.“ Western partying attitudes that tend to disregard the local context still exist as of now but have become less frequent for obvious reasons of past experiences. At the same time, parallel worlds where Afghans meet here and foreigners seperately from each other there, have increased. Afghans also are less fond now to celebrate under the eyes of others. Journalists and writers very often have kept the cultural impacts of such encounters some kind a taboo. First, because it makes us ashamed. Secondly, because it may not have a classical selling point. Thirdly because it could cause unrest. But my point touches neither of these, but more on a cultural reflexion upon ourselves. William Dalrymple in his full and well documented account on the 'Return of a King' and the first Anglo-Afghan war confronts us with the question of why researchers in all the 170 that have gone by since than leave out the look at Afghan sources and with it the chance 'to see ourselves as others see us'. Why is it, I ask myself, that Afghan scholarshipers, some of them westernized to some degree, who have studied in the United states and in Great Britain at some of the best universities, say there are not sure if secularisation by itself can solve the state and problems of Afghanistan. It is true also that only a certain and small percentage of the Afghan population is in a day to day contact with foreigners, able to see and judge who 'we' are and what 'we' do as opposed to 'them' and who are able to reflect about themselves. This is not in any direct relation with La Taverna of course, but we all would probably agree to say that it makes a difference wheather a restaurant of the kind is situated in the fortified parameters of the Wazir Akbar Khan colony or out in Dashte Barchi or even further on the outskirts of town. There consequently is a socio-historical context to every glas of vine emptied in the circumstances of the highly symbolic year 2014. And though I would subscribe to the tolerance of urban Afghans Jeffrey describes, their remarks that „it doesn't bother“ them how we eat, celebrate or party in Kabul can under certain circumstances mean a refusal tainted by a strong sense of diplomacy we find in most Asian and Asian islamic countries. History doesn't repeat itself. But confronting ourselves with today's views of Afghans can equally help us understand the present context and our position in it. One can easily find good reasons to criticize Hamid Karzai for instance for the missing logic in his policy, for his double minded games and lack of rationale. But if Shah Shuja has up until recently been seriously misinterpreted by western authors and critics, the same might possibly go for Karzai, who more than once in the past from his standpoint has had reasons to act the way he acted and if all facts were on the table. For as long as we are unable to take in account how we are perceived by the others, we will solely witness us the way we like to see ourselves.

Court under observation

The trial that I am witnessing this morning is located in Mahmud Raqi, the capital of Kapisa province. The geography limiting the dispersed small city of approximately 40,000 inhabitants is surrounded by karst mountains, a good one and a half hours drive from Kabul. Though a reasonable distance from the capital it may sound, we are deep in the countryside, far away from any tared asphalted road. The car hops along dusty gravel roads. As we drive into the province, Afghan radio stations report on an suicide attack in Kapisa's district of Nijrab. We don't have to go that far for the court trial, but the incident that comes to us as fresh news this very morning shows the fragile state of an area from which ISAF troops have retreated months ago already. French troops in fact were stationed in the area previously on behalf of the security assistance force. They withdrew months ago on order of president Nicolas Sarkozy, then president. The culprit to appear today is a French heritage in a way. Passing in the hands of ISAF and ANA troops as these moved into a zone previously held by insurgents, the security forces emptied the jails and took the man into state custody. Now, he stands in the middle of a justice chamber, accused of murder by a local court that deals with civil and criminal matters. The accused is a bearded man in handcuffs and perhan tambon, the customary local dress. The court deliberations takes place in the office of the judge, not in the court room surprisingly. A narrow place. The judge sits in a corner behind his desk, elevated. The rest in the room sink into plush sofas at the three sides of the room. The prosecutor holds to a stack of files in his hands. The culprit sits in the middle of the room, guarded by a policeman, who tiredly looks to the ground. He has freed the culprit of his handcuffs earlier on. They now dangle from his hip. Tea is served. "We normally don't do this in court," says the judge with an ambiguous smile. What is normal at court in Afghanistan? The judge looks neat. He wears a black vest, is hair accurately combed. Is seems in a mild mood for the day. Just because a foreigner assists the deliberations? A fan rotates from the ceiling. The judge eyes all parties present at regular intervals. The prosecutor is asked to read out loud the charges against the culprit. He is not proficient in reading. His finger follows each of his words on the paper. The indictment is written by hand, with purple thumb prints, taken from alleged witnesses. The accused is said to have killed a relative over a dispute involving personal and professional honor. Money was at stake also, my neighbor whispers. The culprit dares to interrupt with a low voice. He can't follow the deliberations in Dari and asks for an oral translation in Pashto. It is granted to him. Then he gives his version of the facts. The judge shakes his head. The victim was shot in the throat, he corrects the culprit, surely not able to put down a testimony as the accused claims, he says in a firm voice. The prosecuter asks for the man to hang him. From the ohter side of the room an older man interferes, sitting on a brown plush sofa next to me. What were the exact circumstances of the murder, he wants to know? Two of his companions write down with care what is being spoken in the room. The three men call themselves monitors and are working on behalf of IWA (Integrity Watch Afghanistan), an organization that campaigns for transparency at different levels of society. The monitors are independent observers for all courts in the Kapisa districts, they say. Heads of local shuras , headmasters, doctors. "Our presence makes the judge to act with more care" says one of the monitors, not without pride. "Until recently, many people in the district did not dare to go to court." Often the real witnesses would not be heard, claims one of them, or there was no trust in fair procedures. „People here now take their donkey to travel miles to court or with their motorcycle to present their case whereas before they used to be reluctant“, says Ali Mashalafroz, who coordinates the IWA office in Kapisa. "Before the wars“, adds a collegue at his side, „there wouldn't be compulsory defendents either". It is, they murmur, about putting pieces together again. The monitors all have in their hand a questionnaire with 21 categories. It contains questions such as: Has the local police documented the case? Has there been a medical or forensic report? Truth is not to come from one day to the other, the monitors are aware. Their presence, they hope, would render the hearings at courts more transparent. In the absence of independent media or civil society activists, the monitors fill in to observe the course of justice that suffers the caractersitic deficiencies of an Afghan state. Eventually, weeks later, the filled-out questionnaires of the monitors will go to Kabul, where they are evaluated. In funding the monitoring, international donors such as the World Bank, the United Nations Misson, French and international organization hope to push ahead the course of transitional justice and bring some kind of order deep into the Afghan province. As always, this is above all a hope. After the first two hours of delibarations, the trial is postponed. I may get an interview with the judge, I am told. Finally, the answer is negative. Permission has not been granted by the supreme court in Kabul, I am informed. The supreme court in Kabul officially supports the trial monitoring for the Kapisa and Bamiyan provinces. But off the record the institution does not like the justice system to be exposed as a corrupt limb of the Afghan state institutions. We wait over lunchtime for the trial to reach to a sentence. But time is getting late without a decision. We are scheduled to return to Kabul before dark. Back in the capital, a call from Ali Mashalafroz, the Kapisa coordinator, reaches me. The accused has inherited of 18 years behind bars. He has escaped the death penalty. A judgment owed to the transparency of the observers? The 'Communal Trial Monitoring Project', in the years ahead, wants to change the course of justice in more than just two of 36 Afghan provinces, IWA's Yama Torabi, the head of the organization, says. He hopes for more funds in the years to come. But first of all, Afghanistan needs to go through the uncertainties of 2014 – described by many as its most crucial year.

1914 - 2014: Geographies of Memory

In the year 2000 my father died of cancer. He was born in 1937 (or 1315 corresponding to the Afghan-islamic calender). When my father died, he left behind a notebook with photographs of his father, my grandfather. My grandfather was born in 1893 (or 1271). He fought in the World Ward I 1914-1918. With or against his will - the documents don't make mention of it. He was 21 years old then, in the trenches of the Western Front (battle of France, Belgium/Ypern) and a little later on the Eastern Front (Bukowina). In the photographs my grandfather left behind (he was authorized to take photos on the front, a document states) is this photo of a bullet that had penetrated his leg. The bullet was later removed. It is with me now. The French call Wolrd War I „la grande guerre“, the big war. It was the first time men and amunition came together to reach unprecedented levels of kinetic power and destruction. 70 Million soldiers fought in WWI. Nearly ten million died. Mostly young, unmarried soldiers. Among them thousands of soldiers with Islamic identities from the African and middle Eastern colonies of the European imperial posessions. Every eigth soldier did not make it home. The years of WWI and later in WWII were, as an Afghan sociologist remarked, more stable in Afghanistan than in Germany in various respects. In 2014, Afghanistan goes into a year of new uncertainties, the international forces withdrawing, and a hundred years after I discovered the bullet of my grandfather.

Kunduz Exit

Representants of the federal German government with its minister of Foreign Affairs, Guido Westerwelle, and its minister of Defense, Thomas de Maizière, have celebrated the closure of the German PRT in Kunduz today together with the official handing over of the camp to the Afghan security forces. What seems like a solemn end to the German engagement in Afghanistan leaves in fact more questions open than can be answered at this point in time: Will the fragile gains of security on different district levels last for good as a result of mostly US-American anti-terrorist missions accomplished against Taliban and alleged insurgents in the Kunduz area? The recent weeks have seen the killing of the Head of the Independent Election Committee. Also the Char Dara district, famous in Germany for the first heavy air bombardment a German officer has ordered there after WWII back in September 2009, saw a reemergence of violence partly caused due to the existence of the newly created militias and local police structures, with a variety of political and security challenges ahead for the coming months that could generate more violence to come (see here). German analysts for the occasion have pointed out different scenarios for Afghanistan ahead, ranging from a new civil war to a division of the country up to the Taliban seizing power again over most of the country like in 1996. While Taliban assert to be a player in the coming political struggle for power in Afghanistan, analysts also agree to say that history will not repeat itself. This could mean a model of sharing power with the new political as well as economical elites, including legal impunity for both sides smart enough to be communicated to a public opinion highly skeptical of its political leaders. It is highly interesting but in a way scaring also in this respect that intellectual and politically westernized Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai has formed a coalition of circumstances with General Abdul Rashid Dostum with a ticket as vice-president for the letter in the coming elections. If Ghani, who is relatively trusted by western governments and diplomats and was once said to be a potential UN secretary general, joins hands with Dostum, who has a record of ruthless brutality, opportunism and in a way incarnates all sorts of anti-democratic values that play a role in Afghan poltical life, everything seems possible at once. May be also the inclusion of (former or reconciled) Taliban more or less directly coming from the battlefield in a future deal of the kind. Civil war or not could largely depend on how the elections will run. A tiny majority after the second round of voting might open up the doors for allegations of fraud and vote rigging. What will count a lot for in the upcoming months is the behaviour of Afghanistan's leading politicians and long time mujaheddin leaders and their aptitude to compromise or not. The starting election campaign has shown some signs of realism in this respect, but truth will show itself only as election day nears. Postponing the date could lead to major unrest, as it would be felt as a betrayal by many. A division of the country in some regards (language wise) already exists. Here as well, most will depend of the ability of the present political elites together with the neighboring countries Iran, Pakistan, Russia, China and India to engage or not in a multilateral dialogue that could appease or inflame the whole region. I don't personally belong to those who buy in a total withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan. The so called zero-option seems a part in the bargain for the US-Afghan bilateral agreement. The US strategically have more to loose in withdrawing from the region than in staying and having to go on fighting Taliban and insurgency. For this is clear: the insurgency does not seem ready to disappear any time soon. Several reasons that cause the fighting today will remain beyond a potential pecae agreement, as things look now. Coming back to the German presence: Afghan students I spoke to in Kabul the other day were asking me why the German footprint in Afghanistan has come to be so weak in the past few years and why other countries showed a much bigger appetite to engage with the Afghan youth, trying to establish heavy and convincing ties for their academic and economic future. In fact, there is an impression among young Afghan elites that Germany is not investing what it could invest seen its enormous economical potential. Security wise – with a look back to Kunduz – it was the military and strategical weakness of the Germans, pointed at by Afghans and Americans at some point in 2008 and 2009 that brought in a heavy contingent of US soldiers to fight the Taliban. Germans always stood in the second line, covering the anti-terror measures applied in public silence allong the years from 2009 onwards in Kunduz. They could have looked at it, as a German profiled journalist said, but they prefered to turn their eyes away from it and to act deafly.