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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT IN AFGHANISTAN
OCT 31, 2008 - 6:07PM PST
Posted by M. Ashraf Haidari
All posts by this author

I had heard many good things about Wilton Park's conferences, and was finally able to participate in one entitled "Public Diplomacy: Meeting New Challenges" on October 7, 2008. The conference consisted of several sessions, including one on Afghanistan that generated much discussion by a number of publicly renowned diplomacy experts and practitioners from some of the countries with forces in Afghanistan. We discussed challenges and opportunities for public diplomacy in my country in the context of international stabilization and reconstruction efforts. In my remarks, I pointed out three key opportunities for international engagement in Afghanistan that have been underutilized. I stated that no recent post-conflict intervention had enjoyed as much international goodwill and consensus as Afghanistan. Today, some 70 countries are providing assistance to rebuild Afghanistan, while forces from 40 nations participate in the NATO/ISAF to stabilize the country. Secondly, our international partners understand that no peace operation is successful without popular support. Unlike other post-conflict situations, the international community hardly needed to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people upon re-engagement in the country seven years ago. In fact, the Afghan people played a key role in helping the Coalition forces overthrow the Taliban in less than two months. In the two years following the defeat of the Taliban, millions of Afghan refugees optimistically returned home in a show of support for international peace-building efforts and the new regime they helped establish in Afghanistan. Finally, I pointed out that significant progress had been made with less international investment in the stabilization and reconstruction of Afghanistan over the past seven years. We have established the key institutions of a permanent government, and we have made considerable progress in rebuilding infrastructure, in expanding access to basic healthcare, and in providing education to an increasing number of Afghan girls and boys across the country. I noted, however, that our international partners had been either unwilling or slow to capitalize on the above three strategic opportunities. Afghanistan's international partners have so far faltered on three key accounts to help secure the future of Afghanistan, and thereby serve their own national security interests. First, they have been reluctant to provide the necessary level of aid resources to meet Afghanistan's basic reconstruction needs. Second, they have failed to coordinate their aid efforts with one another and with the Afghan state to ensure aid effectiveness. Finally, they have lacked an effective public diplomacy strategy to listen to the Afghan people and deliver on their very basic expectations. At the same time, our partners have not done enough to educate their own publics on how their involvement in Afghanistan ensures their own citizens' security and prosperity in a dangerous world where security is globalized as much as prosperity. Unfortunately, a lack of progress in each of the above key areas over the past seven years has allowed peace spoilers—particularly the Taliban—to fill the gap and destabilize Afghanistan. As far as engaging the Afghan people is concerned, I argued that the international community had so far…... FULL TEXT
 
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Read Comments:

Zarmina Faizi on November 10, 2008 @ 10:31 pm:
Mr. Haidari brings up some really good points, especially about the Afghan government doing more for the poor farmers in Afghanistan.

Zarmina Faizi
http://www.theafghanistandirectory.com

M. Ashraf Haidari on November 12, 2008 @ 1:53 pm:
Ms. Faizi: thank you for your comment. On how to assist poppy farmers in Afghanistan, you may want to read one of my previous blogs on "Agricultural Diplomacy Can Help Wean Afghans from Popp Crop" at the following link: http://uscpublicdiplomacy.com/index.php/newsroom/pdblog_detail/070827_agricultural_diplomacy_can_help_wean_afghans_from_poppy_crop/

abbeysen92 on August 11, 2009 @ 10:29 am:
"McHale is Hillary Cliton's essay | essays person, not the president's"....Interesting...
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