Скачать или смотреть Former US envoy to Afghanistan says great progress made by joint mission in last 3 years

(19 Sep 2012) The former US ambassador to Afghanistan on Tuesday gave a measured assessment of the state of that nation, as the 2014 deadline for the American military to pull out draws closer.
Ryan Crocker, a career diplomat who retired from the post two months ago, said the Afghan Security Forces had made large strides in safeguarding the country in a relatively short amount of time.
A US-led coalition, including NATO forces, has been working to train Afghan police and military forces so they can eventually take over their security for themselves.
"We really got serious, as you know, about sustained, large-scale training in '08-'09," said Crocker, "What that has produced in a fairly short time is quite extraordinary. We have Afghan units leading in almost 50 percent of operations."
However, NATO announced on Tuesday it would temporarily scale back joint-operations with Afghan army and police.
The move follows a series of attacks by Afghan forces or militants wearing Afghan uniforms that have killed 51 coalition troops in Afghanistan this year.
Crocker says corruption throughout the Afghan government and military remains a serious issue, and one President Hamid Karzai will have to deal with in his remaining days in office.
Karzai has said he will leave the presidency in 2014.
Crocker said the Afghan leader was thinking long-term about his own legacy and the stability of a still-shaky democracy in his country.
The former ambassador also spoke of the recent violence in Libya, Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries in response to an anti-Islam movie made by a filmmaker in California.
The US government has denounced the film.
The US Ambassador to Libya and three Americans were killed in an attack last week on the US consulate in Benghazi after protests erupted there and elsewhere in the region.
Crocker said some of the clashes may actually be in response to "repressive governments, economic failure, political stagnation" in the Middle East, and frustrated Muslims in those nations look for a scapegoat. They blame America.
"There was some spontaneity to these demonstrations. There was a lot of calculation to them too," said Crocker.
On the overall Arab Spring, Crocker said the region was just in the initial phases of change.
"This is not just act one, it's act one, scene one. Well, maybe it's scene one and a half," he said.
He said people tend to think a story has ended when the news coverage stops.
"When the TV lights went off in Tahrir Square after Mubarak stepped down, like usual, we said, 'end of story, end of autocracies, end of problem. It's a wonderful new world out there.' Well, not exactly."
He predicted a lot of turbulence in the years to come and would not speculate on what may come to pass in the near future.

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