Interview with US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke: 'We're Not in Afghanistan to Build a Perfect Democracy'

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SPIEGEL: When the US has talked about handing over the responsibility for a war to local forces in the past, it represented the final stage before a complete collapse.

Holbrooke: You keep going back to the wrong war and I would rather just focus on Afghanistan.

SPIEGEL: Giving responsibility to local forces sounds nice but can be difficult. Take police training. First, the Germans trained too few police officers well and then the Americans trained a lot of police officers, too quickly and too poorly. Is that really a success?

Holbrooke: Nobody can call the training of the police a success in the last five or six years. We are changing the entire approach to police training. American military units especially trained to train the police and the army are coming in now to work on that and we recognize that that is probably the weakest link in the chain.

SPIEGEL: You talked about the allies in this war. Some countries, among them the Germans, announced sending more troops. But others are withdrawing, for example Canada and the Netherlands. What will Obama demand from his allies in the future?

Holbrooke: The European contributions have been extremely important and I hope they will continue. I just talked about it with London, Paris and Berlin. Those were good talks, but each country has to make its own decisions.

SPIEGEL: In the past German forces in Afghanistan were sometimes ridiculed because of their strict rules of engagement.

Holbrooke: Germany has had over 30 soldiers killed, I don't think that's anything to laugh about. I used to serve as ambassador in Germany. I was there when the Karlsruhe decision of July 1994 opened the door for deploying Germans outside of Germany for the first time since the end of World War II and I saw how difficult it was. Then there was Kosovo and now you have Germans risking their lives in Afghanistan. Moreover, the Germans are giving a lot of economic aid. We should respect that.

SPIEGEL: For the first time Chancellor Angela Merkel and the new Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg have spoken about "warlike circumstances"…

Holbrooke: … but there is a war going on in Afghanistan.

SPIEGEL: Until now German politicians were very successful in avoiding that word.

Holbrooke: What does SPIEGEL say?

SPIEGEL: SPIEGEL says it is a war.

Holbrooke: Just so.

SPIEGEL: Is the Afghan President Hamid Karzai still America's partner in this war?

Holbrooke: Karzai is the re-elected president of Afghanistan. We respect that and we look forward to working with him very closely. Yes, he is our partner.

SPIEGEL: You are on your way to Kabul -- are you going to tell him who he can appoint as governors and ministers in his government?

Holbrooke: We are going to urge him to pick competent people who are up to the job, who are strong leaders. Afghanistan suffers from a tremendous lack of strong leadership talent after 30 years of continuous war. But there are some very good people in the country and we're going to encourage him to appoint strong province governors and good ministers.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Holbrooke, thank you very much for the interview.

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• Part 1: 'We're Not in Afghanistan to Build a Perfect Democracy'
• Part 2: 'Nobody Can Call the Training of the Police a Success'