Neumann: I don’t want to discuss individual allies.
SPIEGEL: In recent weeks, NATO Commander in Chief, General Jones, sounded almost desperate to get forces to those parts of the country where he needs them most.
Neumann: He also still needs the rest of what was promised to him. You have two things going on: You’ve got positive development. But the question is: Have you reached the ceiling? You have to answer that on a European basis.
SPIEGEL: Maybe the Europeans have different ideas as to how best to solve the problem.
Neumann: Yes, some of them obviously resist the idea that you have an army in order to fight. And I have very little patience for that. But some of the allies are accepting a full measure of responsibility. Take the last battle for Kandahar. You had forces from Holland, Denmark, Canada, the United States and Afghanistan -- and it was extremely successful.
SPIEGEL: In Kabul, on the other hand, it seemed as though the Germans were treated with open contempt at ISAF headquarters. The axis of wimps, it seems, has reappeared.
Neumann: You don’t expect me to answer that, do you! Come on, give me a break. They are doing a good job in the north. They have participated in a couple of valuable arrests. But I believe all NATO nations should remove their caveats on their forces. That’s what was agreed to. NATO has made a fundamental commitment to win in Afghanistan. And NATO is either going to win here or fail as an organization. I think every nation that does not want to do all it can does not fulfill its commitment, and will at some point have to look at what the impact of their failure is on NATO.
SPIEGEL: Isn’t that a little schizophrenic: On one hand the military people say, the situation is manageable, even winnable. On the other hand nothing less than the future of NATO is at stake.
Neumann: Welcome to Afghanistan. Both are true. This is a dynamic situation. It depends what you do with it. We just won this important battle for Kandahar. If we are able to move in the direction of both security and development then you have a manageable situation and one perhaps moving towards victory. If we don’t quite handle the security, if we have to divert forces too soon, the Taliban will be back in two or three months and then the entire battle will have been in vain.
SPIEGEL: Is it really a good idea to link the destiny of NATO so closely to the events in Afghanistan?
Neumann: I don’t think it’s a question of being smart or not. I think it’s a fact. NATO has made a commitment. If you can’t fight even in the place that produced al-Qaida and September 11 and a series of terrorist attacks in Europe, what is the point? Who's NATO going to fight against? What's it for?
SPIEGEL: What makes you so sure that this conflict is winnable? Look at the history of this place. The British couldn't do it, the Soviets couldn’t. Why should we be able to pull it of?
Neumann: First of all, the conception that this is a war against the tribes is wrong. It is flat wrong. There is a part of the Pashtun area that has supported the Taliban. But there is a large part of the Pashtuns who fight against them, including in the army. This is not the foreigner against the tribe. This is an insurgency within Afghanistan…
SPIEGEL: … which we can someday leave to the Afghans to fight?
Neumann: Just because something is difficult it is not a reason to immediately become a coward and run away. It is too early to get panicky. But it’s going to be hard. The question that ought to be debated is: What is at stake here? And I find damn little in the European debate, and even in some of the American debate, about what is the purpose of being here and what is the risk of failure.
SPIEGEL: But it must be possible to ask whether the strategy being followed is the correct one. Doesn’t what we're doing here strengthen the militants? Doesn't it unify them? Doesn't it activate them?
Neumann: I haven’t seen much of that in relation to Afghanistan. There are certainly some foreign fighters, the odd Chechen, some from Algeria. But not like the draw of Iraq.
SPIEGEL: But didn't the fact that the Taliban were able to reclaim a parts of the south give the Americans in Kabul the impression: Oh my God, we might be losing?
Neumann: No, not yet. We have also seen some very positive developments. The parliament for instance has done far better than a number of new parliaments in other countries. Members of Parliament, although they span everything form drug dealers and criminals to housewives and technocrats, share a certain sense of responsibility for their place in history.
SPIEGEL: If it was such a success to have housewives and drug dealers in one parliament, shouldn’t one have drawn the Taliban into this process too?
Neumann: Those Taliban who want to be in that process can get into it. But if you are saying negotiate with people who have absolutely diametrically opposed views, than I would answer: If you use the word negotiate the outcome would presumably mean some kind of compromise. So what do you want to compromise? Walk away from democracy? Give the Taliban some form of power so they can build up their medieval institutions? No, I don’t think so.
SPIEGEL: Does such praise for the parliament mean that the government under President Hamid Karzai has been a disappointment?
Neumann: The government has probably been as good as in Germany after the Thirty Years War. That is what you need to look at, not World War II or World War I. Those wars left the society intact. But look at the conditions in 1648 after 30 years of having the land ravaged by armies that passed back and forth. That’s what you are building on and compared to that, the Afghanistan of today looks pretty good.
SPIEGEL: You mentioned war lords and drug bosses in parliament. Is the day going to come when we also see them before a court of justice?
Neumann: I can soundly hope that we will soon see some major drug figures brought to court. There have in fact been 300 arrests and over 100 trials and convictions with sentences between 10 and 15 years -- but they were mostly lower level drug traffickers. I’m not saying that we’ve got the big drug lords. We haven’t yet. I hope we see that very soon.
SPIEGEL: And how about the war lords?
Neumann: I think the Afghans are the ones to decide this because they and only they are going to pay the price for it. Therefore they have to decide the balance between looking at retribution for past actions and how much society can take before destabilization.
SPIEGEL: Returning to the drug situation -- this year the opium fields were 60 percent larger than the year before.
Neumann: With opium you need to think in a two year cycle. Two years ago President Karzai had some success in convincing farmers to plant a different crop. But our eradication program was a failure. That convinced people that it was basically free of risk. On top of that -- in the province of Helmand …
SPIEGEL: … where most of the opium is harvested …
Neumann: …you have a very active effort by the Taliban in league with the drug traffickers to encourage the production of poppy. There were threats against farmers who did not grow poppy. So, you have tribal chiefs and drug dealers vying for control and both throwing their support behind the Taliban. It is in their interest to prevent the creation of government authority so they have freedom of action. You have to fight against that. You have to break their power military.
SPIEGEL: There have been multi-million dollar programs for alternative crops. Have they all failed?
Neumann: No, they have not failed. There are two parts to the concept of alternative livelihoods. One is the band-aid part of it. It’s paying farmers whose harvest you destroy. It’s very temporary and very expensive. The other part is rebuilding the rural economy. And I think it’s stupid for anybody to expect that anything of major significance could be accomplished within one or two years. The farmers can’t bring their products to the markets. We need roads, we need power, and we need agricultural processing.
SPIEGEL: Indeed, Afghanistan needs development.
Neumann: These programs are not wrong, they are massively under funded. And I think the Europeans do very little to help with alternative livelihoods. The West is refusing to fund the major infrastructure that makes rural development possible.
SPIEGEL: What are the overall strategic goals of the American presence in Afghanistan? Is it China? Is it Iran? Is it oil?
Neumann: The first order of goals is what took us here -- 9/11. If we fail the country will again be a home for terrorists who will strike at us and will strike at you because meanwhile you too are here.
SPIEGEL: It sounds almost as if you can't wait for such an eventuality.
Neumann: No, I want to remind people who are flinching in the face of struggle what the price of losing is. Nobody should believe that any salvation from a sort of Hobbesian world is possible.
SPIEGEL: That sounds again like the famous discussion: Americans are from Mars, Europeans from Venus.
Neumann: Naturally you would again find here the basing of terrorist movements. A failed Afghanistan would attract every sort of crazy jihadist movement. See, all my life I have been a practicing diplomat and I know that diplomacy is the art of the possible and how few the margins are that you can change. But Afghanistan happens to be a distressingly different place. Here you are going to have a lot of work for long term success. Or you are going to have failure -- which you could do a lot faster. If we leave at this time, when the state is fragile, when there is no leader, no army, no dictator -- there is simply no alternative. It’s either -- or. There is no third choice.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Ambassador thank you for this interview.
Interview conducted by Hans Hoyng and Susanne Koelbl
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