Ashraf Ghani: U.S. Critical To Afghanistan's Future
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani tells NPR that most people in his country want a continued U.S. troop presence and that his government is determined to make sure that the self-declared Islamic State does not gain a foothold.
Ghani, on an official visit to the United States, spoke in a wide-ranging interview with Morning Edition host Renee Montagne to be broadcast on Monday.
He says the perception that Afghans are eager for U.S. troops to leave the country is simply untrue. "They see the United States as critical to their future," he says.
Ghani, who came to power in September succeeding longtime President Hamid Karzai, is expected to spend Monday at Camp David, Md., for discussions with Secretary of State John Kerry and to meet with President Obama at the White House on Tuesday.
He is also scheduled for talks with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to discuss security and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew to talk about the economic challenges faced by Afghanistan.
Asked about ISIS, Ghani expressed concern that "terrorism is morphing into a system. ... It's becoming sophisticated. And more than anything else, it's controlling immense resources."
In Afghanistan, the Islamic State, he says, is "posing a threat, but we are determined to make sure that they do not do the kind of atrocities that they've managed so well in Syria, Iraq, Libya or Yemen."
One of the biggest challenges faced by his six-month-old government is corruption.
"It's a bottomless pit," acknowledges Ghani, a former World Bank official who has lived in the U.S.
"The good news is that it can be overcome. The bad news is that it requires an enormous amount of effort, determination and focus. And there'll be a lot of resistance to it," he tells NPR.
Salaries are a main area of concern, as officials skim a take before paying employees. Technology may solve the problem. Paying salaries by phone would "clear the middleman," he says.
He's already gone after the Kabul Bank, "which was notorious," he says.
"It was a case of a fraud. From Day 1, it was established as a Ponzi scheme," Ghani says.
An Afghan Supreme Court ruling last week has cleared the way to begin going after corrupt politicians and politically connected people implicated in the scheme "to get the depositors' money and use it for their own," he says.
"[All] the books were fake. And we've tackled it," Ghani says.
Despite his reputation as a reformer, however, Ghani has not managed to avoid criticism. Some suggested that he's acting more like a dictator than a president — micromanaging the approval of contracts issued by the government.
"I'm not taking power. I'm catalyzing systemic change. First you need to gather it in order to give it away in a credible and effective way," Ghani says.
"I'm too busy thinking about the larger issues to micromanage. All of my colleagues who've worked with me in the ministry of finance or other, they know I delegate," he says.
(Click here to read a transcript of the interview).
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Transcript
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Afghanistan's president is in Washington this week, his first state visit. Ashraf Ghani has been invited to address Congress, and he will also go to the White House where he's expected to push to slow down the departure of American troops so that more will stay longer in Afghanistan.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
That request will be taken seriously, in no small part because President Obama has embraced Ghani as the partner he never had in Hamid Karzai. And certainly, Ghani could hardly be more different than his predecessor.
GREENE: Ghani spent 20 years in the West, mostly as an official at the World Bank where he specialized in economically troubled countries.
MONTAGNE: Ashraf Ghani is happy to call himself a technocrat and a reformer. In his first six months on the job, he has taken very public aim at rapacious governors and incompetence in corruption in the ministries. Soon after he arrived yesterday, we joined him at the White House guest quarters, Blair House.
President Ashraf Ghani, good morning.
PRESIDENT ASHRAF GHANI: Good morning to you and to your listeners.
MONTAGNE: You came into office pledging to fight corruption. This was a top priority. Corruption is something that has become endemic to Afghanistan over these past years. What, though, is the damage? Who or what is hurt when corruption reaches this level?
GHANI: First, the poor are hurt. Thirty-six percent of the Afghan population lives below poverty. Second, women are hurt. We have, unfortunately, thanks to 36 years of conflict, a lot of female-headed households. Three, the youth are hurt. Our majority for youth, under 30, they have no hope. They don't get jobs. To sum up, the country hurts. The good news is that it can be overcome. The bad news is that it requires enormous amount of effort and determination and focus. And there'll be a lot of resistance to it.
MONTAGNE: Let me say, you have, since taking office - you have fired a fair number of people. I mean, to give an example to our listeners, just recently, you visited the province of Herat, which borders Iran, which is prosperous, but has a big drug-smuggling problem, drugs coming in from Iran and going out from Afghanistan. And when you were down there, one of the things you did was fire, it seems like, dozens of workers, from border guards to district governors. Who do you replace these people with? I mean, is there a group of honest, competent people out there that you're drawing from?
GHANI: Yes. That's why we could form a government of national unity fighting corruption. The ordinary Afghan is sick and tired of it because it's she or he that pays the price. If you've just graduated from a teachers' training college and the provincial director wants $2,000 from you, how are you going to pay it?
MONTAGNE: The provincial director, education director.
GHANI: Yes, of education, for instance...
(CROSSTALK)
MONTAGNE: One of the people fired - one of the people fired in Herat.
GHANI: Which was one of the fired. Yes, exactly. And the system prevented the honest people from working. We are discovering a lot of talent because an honest system brings honest people. For instance, salaries - salary is a huge area of corruption. We are now talking to some of the most innovative thinkers in technology that we could become the first country that can make payments of all salaries through the phone.
MONTAGNE: Through the phone?
GHANI: Yes.
MONTAGNE: Clear out the middleman.
GHANI: Clear the middleman. So some of those solutions lie in innovative technology. But the most significant thing is public participation. That assures the Afghan public that our promises are not empty.
MONTAGNE: Could you give us an example...
GHANI: Sure.
MONTAGNE: ...Of one specific...
GHANI: Absolutely.
MONTAGNE: ...Project or ministry you're dealing with?
GHANI: The Ministry of Defense - the Ministry of Defense. There were allegations that there was a difference in fuel contract for three years, which was roughly estimated at $1 billion and that the difference between the contract that was accepted and the other bids were $211 million. I canceled it. I rebid the entire process, and I suspended all the officials who were engaged in it. So there's a full investigation of everyone underway.
We are going to save the Afghan treasury and the American public, who are underwriting the bill, hopefully tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. And in the process, now we have changed the procurement system, the way we purchase goods. It is reviewed by a committee with impeccable credential for honesty, and I personally review the ultimate contracts with a core group of officials under my own chairmanship.
MONTAGNE: Although critics have taken to suggesting that maybe you're taking too much power to yourself - I think I've heard the word dictator uttered on this score. Do you have to, as the president of Afghanistan, actually oversee the contracts yourself?
GHANI: For the large contracts, yes. And I'm not doing it. I'm chairing a commission.
MONTAGNE: But it's a presidential commission.
GHANI: It's a presidential commission.
MONTAGNE: And it overrides ministers?
GHANI: No, the ministers are members of it. But the due process needs to be observed because that's the seal of integrity. President Truman made his name by looking into contracting. And that's how integrity within the military procurement started in the United States.
MONTAGNE: The buck stops here.
GHANI: Yes. So the other is, I'm not taking power. I'm catalyzing systemic change. So for a couple of years, we will centralize procurement. Then it's going to go again to credible entities and institutions that could take care of it.
MONTAGNE: Let me interject something you would know better than anybody. No economy can fully function when large swaths of the country are conflict zones...
GHANI: Sure.
MONTAGNE: ...When a simple delivery truck can't go into a province next door to the capital, Kabul. Now, you're going to be meeting with President Obama this week to work on troop levels and timetables. But let me just ask you a larger question. I think it's fair to say average Americans think that the average Afghan doesn't want American troops in their country. How true is that?
GHANI: It's not true. Former President Karzai held a consultative assembly, September of 2013. He brought representatives from all over the country, and he asked them whether they approved of the bilateral security agreement. They overwhelmingly said yes.
MONTAGNE: And why do...
GHANI: ...Because...
MONTAGNE: ...Afghans want troops in their country?
GHANI: Because they see the United States as critical to their future. You cannot imagine what life was like in December of 2001.
MONTAGNE: I can. I saw Kabul. Kabul was destroyed.
GHANI: Kabul itself was ground zero. West Kabul now, which is thriving, was totally devastated. It looked like ruins from the medieval times. So it's a different country, and the United States has been critical to this. Over a million American soldiers have served with Afghans over these years. They've gotten to know our remotest valleys, our deserts, our mountains. And the majority of them that I've encountered will tell you something that moves me to tears. They say they've left their hearts in Afghanistan.
MONTAGNE: There has been at least one former militant, a Taliban commander in the South who identified himself as ISIS. He's gone now, I think, as I understand it.
GHANI: He's gone.
MONTAGNE: He's gone. But how great, President Ghani, is the threat that ISIS will spread into Afghanistan? What is the likelihood? And is the concern, is it great enough to be an argument for troops staying longer?
GHANI: Daesh, its Arabic name.
MONTAGNE: Daesh, yes, ISIS Daesh.
GHANI: It goes through four phases - organize, orient, decide and act. We documented the first three phases. We preempted them from acting. If al-Qaida - all apologies to Microsoft for the analogy - is Windows 1, Daesh is Windows 5. So they are posing the threat that we are determined to make sure that they do not do the kind of atrocities that they've managed in Syria, Iraq, Libya or Yemen.
MONTAGNE: A few days ago, a group of young men beat to death a young woman. They thought she had burned the pages of a Quran. Her parents say she was mentally ill. She was killed at a famous shrine right in the middle of the day in the middle of Kabul with a crowd urging these guys on. To them, desecrating the Quran is punishable by death. But what do you as president say to these men who killed this woman? What do you say to them because they also are your people?
GHANI: No, they are my people. They suffer from post-stress disorder syndrome.
MONTAGNE: From the whole - they're young, but from whole endless war.
GHANI: Thirty-six years of conflict, but the endless war. But my message to them has been very clear. There's no place for mob justice in Afghanistan. I've put a commission. I've put some of the most respected religious scholars on it - women's activists, civil rights activists, human rights activists - and they are going to investigate this. Ninety percent of our police are fighting terrorists, so we don't have enough oriented towards their key duty, which is enforcement of the law. But these are precisely the inheritance that we want to overcome.
Particularly the mark of success for us would be that a woman cannot only walk in the streets of every major city, but can go from one province to another without any hindrance. And our women are doing remarkable things. You know, one of them has written a poem. She's a 17-year-old that won the first prize in the Emirates Airlines poetry contest. And her poem is that she fell through the Wonderland - it's a play on Alice. And then she says we are all mad because to love ugly is the real love, because to love something beautiful is easy. But when windows shatter through a bomb, we will repair it next week because we are Afghans. That's the spirit. That's what will keep us going.
MONTAGNE: President Ghani, thank you very much.
GHANI: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani speaking with me at Blair House. He is on his first state visit to the U.S. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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