On May 12, Darcy Knoll and Scott Taylor sat down with Omar Samad, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Canada, for an in-depth interview about the state of affairs in his homeland. What follows is a brief excerpt of that conversation.

Esprit de Corps: Thank you very much for taking the time to meet with us. First of all, could you walk us through the state of the Afghan army, how fully deployed they are now and their inter-cooperation with the Afghan police forces?

Omar Samad: The Afghan National Army’s reform started about three years ago. … So far the target we have established for ourselves was to have an army of about 70,000 men trained and we are a bit less than halfway through that process. We estimate it will take us probably four to five years to reach that goal with the army. Now we are also thinking of having an effective small air force. … In the past we used to have a full-fledged air force – fixed wing and all. So at this point I think we want it to comprise of transport aircraft as well as helicopters. Attack helicopters may be in the picture initially, then if there’s a need for fixed wing [fighters] we’d look at that.

Now the police are also a big project that the Germans have had a lead in. The goal there was to train about 50,000 policemen and women. So far, we are probably at about 60-65 per cent of that.

Are they locally recruited and trained?

They’re recruited in various ways. They could be local, but it’s mixed. It doesn’t mean that if you’re recruited locally you would be deployed locally. It’s a national police, which means that people could be deployed anywhere in the country.

What I have to say is that we have done a fairly good job with the help of the international community in both areas, but there seems to be indications that we might need more focused training. Both for the army and the police, not only do we need more extended training time wise, but also training that is specialized in certain areas. It’s not just a question of putting somebody through boot camp for six weeks or eight weeks or whatever.

At one point it was two weeks for illiterate recruits and four weeks for those who could read…

Yes, which is obviously not sufficient… So I think that one issue is the question is the quality of the training and the amount of time given for the training. Number two has to do with how they are equipped. So what level of equipment do we provide for the police and the army in order to make them effective in a place like Afghanistan? On one hand, they have to be able to fight insurgents and local menaces and terrorists crossing our borders, and on the other hand they have to maintain peace and security, which of course is our ultimate goal. And then it’s also important for the Afghan people to trust the army and the police and to trust their own safety and their families and their villages and their districts to the national security structure.

What kind of screening process is there for the police, so that you are not getting possible insurgents infiltrating the ranks?

I am not an expert in how they go about doing this, but what I do know is that there is a screening process that obviously goes about checking people’s backgrounds and education levels, what kind of involvement they have had in the past with the militias and armed groups that existed in the country in different periods of time and whether they have any issues with narcotics, criminality etc. So these are the kinds of checks that are being done.

Also we are very clear that we want a volunteer army, that’s also a multiethnic army, that we are going to mix the different ethnic groups of Afghanistan into this army and deploy them as seen by the commanders.

But that’s still down the road, right now you’re still fielding large formations that remain mostly in their area and are comprised of one ethnic group. Is that correct?

Nope, the national army is mixed.

Would the working language be Pashtu?

Almost everyone in Afghanistan speaks Dari. It’s the langua franca of the country. And then you have half of the people in the country who’s first language is Pashtu and then the other half who’s first language is whatever else. But the langua franca of Afghanistan is Dari, so that even more Pashtu natives speak Dari and as do Uzbeks and people of other groups. Dari is the Afghan version of Farsi.

Language is not that much of a barrier in Afghanistan, it never has been even in the past... Afghanistan since all the way back to the 19 th century when the first Afghan armies were born and trained has never had a language barrier. So this country has a history of having armies, provincial armies, official armies. There was a time before the Soviets started training our armies when the Turks were our trainers. Back in the 1920s-30s. It was only in the 1950s when the Soviets were asked to equip and to help us form a modern army. We asked the Americans to do that at the time and they declined. So the reason why we turned to the Soviets was because the West declined. We really needed to modernize our army and the Soviets were more than happy in the 1950s to provide us with credit lines and hundreds of millions of dollars of military hardware and open their schools and academies to Afghan officers for training.

But you’re saying language is not a problem, but literacy is still a challenge for these guys…

Illiteracy is a problem, but I do believe they’re trying very hard to recruit volunteers who are literate or have basic literacy skills, but there may be some cases where that falls short, especially with the police. So it’s important to also not deny those who are willing to join the police … but it’s good to probably put them through a literacy program first before they are then trained as a policeman. (Note: According to UNICEF, the literacy rate recorded in 2000 for Afghanistan was 36 per cent.)

What is the current unemployment rate in Afghanistan?

We do not know the unemployment rate in Afghanistan because this is too difficult to gage at this point. But we know what the economic growth rate is and we know that in the past four years it has been between nine to 14 per cent each year. … Obviously the economic rate is high because we started so low. … Some of it is based on [foreign] investment, some of it is based on the drug economy and also the private sector – small to medium sized business.

(Note: According to the CIA World Factbook, “Expanding poppy cultivation and a growing opium trade may account for one-third of gross domestic product and looms as one of Kabul’s most serious policy challenges.”)

Included in that total is also the money that countries are donating for aid. Are these donors putting in benchmarks whereby you have to take control of the security situation by a certain milestone?

Well the goal is for the Afghans to take over and take charge of security matters at a certain time when our institutions are fully developed, when our capacity has built to the point where we do not need foreign security expertise, where also we have concrete tangible results in the fight against terrorism… Everything in Afghanistan is in the process of formation, reform and development and certain things are going to … take a longer time to reach maturity.

How many provinces are considered flashpoints?

Mostly the provinces adjacent to the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The rest of the country, which is say 80 per cent of Afghanistan, is to a large extent stable and secure and focused on construction. It’s only the six or seven provinces that border the tribal regions that are problematic.

What is specifically needed from Canadian troops in Afghanistan?

Well Canadian troops are some of the best trained troops in the world. They have been in Afghanistan for the past four and a half years so they have adapted already to Afghanistan’s conditions and they’ve learned quite a bit from their experience.

What we need to do there is study the conditions in the south very carefully to see what are the sources of instability there. Where do they emanate from? What causes this insurgency? How much of it is internal to Afghanistan and how much of it is external? How do the locals in those regions react to this state of instability? What are their solutions? It’s very important to get the view of the locals about how they think this problem can be resolved. … And do not forget that this is not just a military mission – this is also a goodwill mission to help Afghans in different ways to help themselves eventually.

How long will Canadian forces be needed in Afghanistan?

I wish I had an answer for you. I don’t think anyone has an answer at this point of how long the Canadian military would be in Afghanistan. There’s always a debate in Afghanistan that exists and continues to exist to decide at the political as well as the popular level as to when Canadians will disengage from Afghanistan, but we think that at this point it’s too early to talk about exit strategies and disengagements because we’ve just started to work on stabilizing the south.

When you’re in the process of stabilization of the operation you don’t come out and discuss the timetables for withdrawal while the enemy is sitting watching what you’ll do and planning their future operations according to what we will say here or what the Canadians will decide here. That would be counter-productive in my opinion and premature… Afghans would like to see an end to the foreign security presence in Afghanistan as soon as the threat of terrorism has subsided and as soon as we all agree together that this is the time to do so.

The question is though, how soon can the Afghan army become more efficient?

That is a very important element in the decision-making process in the future as to how well trained and effective is the Afghan army in taking care of its own affairs. That will definitely plan an important role in the decision.

The last question we want to ask is what is your take on General Hillier?

I’ve known General Hillier since his days in Afghanistan when he was heading ISAF and he is very well respected in Afghanistan by our people. He obviously is also well respected here in Canada. There may be different views about the mission in Afghanistan, but he is one Canadian that knows my country and the region where my country is located.

Omar Samad was born in 1961 in Afghanistan and was educated in Paris, London and Kabul. He left his homeland for 22 years when the Soviets invaded in 1979 and moved to the United States. Here he attended American University and George Mason University. He returned to Afghanistan in 2001 and worked for the Afghan Foreign Ministry. He took up his posting as Afghan ambassador to Canada in September 2004.