Interview with Ambassador Tadamichi Yamamoto

The world was transfixed by the rapid speed at which the Taliban were able to return to power across the country in mid-August, and now more than a month has passed since the U.S. military presence ended in Afghanistan. What is your assessment of the current situation in Afghanistan? 
 
The fall of the Ghani government was so rapid and unexpected that everyone was thrown into confusion, including the Taliban and the Afghan people. Even the Taliban were not expecting such a rapid change of government and they were not ready. Now the effort is underway to try to come out of that confusion. That is not really going very well, and that is something we should focus on.
 
The problem is that this confusion is only a symptom of the real issue. There are two things that I think are of immediate concern. One is the humanitarian needs of Afghanistan, and the other is the macroeconomic management of the country to stabilize the society; and without a stable Afghanistan, the risk of terrorists utilizing the country could become real.
 
The humanitarian need is dire. Of the 34 million people in Afghanistan, more than 50% or around 18 million or more, are living under the poverty line, which means that they subsist on less than a dollar a day, or barely having one meal per day. Winter is coming, and the temperature will go below freezing; there has been one of the worst droughts for years, and many people have been displaced due to conflict, so need for humanitarian assistance, including medical supplies, is one thing which has to be dealt with immediately.
 
The other is the macroeconomic management. When the Taliban went into Kabul, the ministries stopped functioning and the officials left; and the total governance structure went down. Now, the Taliban has to manage the country as a whole, not just security but also the economy.
 
Some of the key Taliban members are currently under sanctions and also a group called the Haqqani network, which is part of the Taliban, is under sanctions. Because of this, the U.S. government has frozen the bank assets of the Afghanistan government in the United States. The IMF and World Bank have stopped assistance because the recipient government does not exist. This means that there’s no inflow of cash. They cannot make the necessary payments, nor provide salaries.
 
This situation, if left alone, could lead to the collapse of their economy. The collapse of their economy, particularly coming at the time of winter with the freezing environment, could lead to a tragic situation and possible civil unrest. This is going to be an extremely difficult situation, and this has to be dealt with immediately.
 
The worst thing would be to have the destabilization of the country. Afghanistan is a huge country. The land area is 1.7 times that of Japan, more than double that of the United Kingdom, and it’s not easy to control the whole territory. There are more than 20 terrorist organizations in the region. If the security situation deteriorates, they might make use of that confusion. Stabilizing the country is going to be critical.

What is status of and outlook for UN personnel and UN operations in the country?  
 
The UN had about 5,000 people working in the country, but about 70-80% of them were Afghan people. The Afghan staff are the core of the UN efforts to reach out to the Afghan people, The Taliban takeover’s problem was that people were not quite sure whether these Afghan staff would be allowed to work. Only recently, Foreign Minister Muttaqi informed the United Nations system in Afghanistan that everyone can work to help and deal with the humanitarian situation. That is a good step forward, but the Taliban needs to really enable this.

However, I have not yet heard that many of the former donors, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the EU, or Japan, have had such good talks with the Taliban. They have communicated and made some arrangements which should allow them to, for instance, bring some of the Afghan staff out of the country, but there has not really been serious dialogue with the Taliban and the key countries in the international community, although complex issue of the recognition of the government should be carefully be addressed lest the contacts are interpreted as the de facto recognition.

In the SPF event, you also mentioned that “we need to rethink about peacebuilding and nation building seriously and sincerely." What are some lessons to be learned, and how can those be applied moving forward? 

I worked on Afghanistan for five and a half years, first as a deputy and four years as the head of UNAMA, the UN Mission to Afghanistan. I felt many things while helping the Afghan government take on its effort to build their own country. I felt that the most important thing that we should remember, not just in words, but really with heart, is that a country has to be built by their own people, that the ownership of efforts to build a country is probably the most fundamental thing that we have to respect.
 
I’m not saying that our efforts in Afghanistan were bad or that we didn’t think of the Afghan ownership. That’s not true. We always thought of Afghan ownership as the primary consideration. But, if we look at our efforts with the vantage point of hindsight with cool-headedness, and look at our efforts to help the creation of a centralized governance structure or administrative structure, we must ask if the system, which we were trying to create really worked with a country like Afghanistan, where the local independence or the ethnic groups in localities had their own way of governing the political and social situation. If you sent a governor, who had no roots in that region, to a locality saying that he is the most capable, and his presence there disrupted the existing political and social power structure, what would happen?

When I first went to Kabul, I was stunned with the contrast. On the one hand, you saw really poor districts where the buildings were unable to keep out the cold, and then on the other you saw a row of palaces being built. I wondered, who owned these palaces? These were the people who had made fortune through working with international community.
 
When you see that more than half the population is living under the poverty line even after so much money had been invested, you would want to know how to improve the impact of international assistance to help the most vulnerable.

What are your expectations or hopes for Japan’s role in Afghanistan as well as the broader region?

I think Japan has a very important role because of Japan's idiosyncrasy or Japan’s own comparative advantage. Japan has good relationships with all the countries in the region including Iran, Pakistan, Central Asian countries, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, India, and China on Afghanistan. Japan is in a position to be able to work with all the parties impartially, and that is a very unique position.
 
Many of the countries that have large influences in Afghanistan, have some baggage from the past or complex relationships of neighbours. Japan is unique because of its impartiality. Its actions are not politically oriented. This gives relief to the Afghan people, including the Taliban, and boosts their confidence that what Japan does is intended purely for Afghanistan and for the Afghan people.
 
Japan also has a long track record of assisting Afghanistan. For the first years of assistance after 2002, Japan was the second largest donor for many years, and even now they’re the third or fourth largest cumulatively.
 
Japan can also take initiative in garnering support for economic and developmental assistance as they have done in the past in 2002 and 2012 when they hosted ministerial conferences to assist Afghanistan. I think it would be good for Japan to make a decision to work on this.
 
The first thing that has to be done is humanitarian assistance in collaboration with the United Nations. The second thing, which I think could be unique to Japan, is for Japan to talk to the countries in the region, and also to talk to key donors like the U.S. and the U.K. who have had difficult experiences in Afghanistan, and then bring them together. Japan can do this in collaboration with the United Nations or EU, who are also well placed to do similar things.

SPF has an extensive network of projects across Southeast Asia and also has experience working in peace mediation efforts including in Southern Thailand. What is the role for private organizations like SPF in supporting peace and stability in Afghanistan and across the region?