Afghanistan: The Forgotten War, Iowa City, Iowa, September 24, 2008

- [Sharon Benzoni] Our speaker today, Mark Schneider, joined the International Crisis Group in spring 2001, a senior vice president and special advisor on Latin America, he directs the Washington Advocacy office, conveying crisis group analysis, and recommendations to the white house, the state department, the department of defense, and congress, as well as the world bank and other international organizations. He also serves as special advisor on Latin America and on HIV/AIDS and security. His areas of expertise include post conflict resolu, reconstruction excuse me and nation building. Especially within Afghanistan. US foreign policy in the 21st century, Latin America and Caribbean issues, and HIV/AIDS and security. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming, Mark Schneider. - [Mark Schneider] Thank you very much Sharon. I'm gonna start by apologizing, because I had some great slides to show, unfortunately, they are in one of those little memory sticks that currently is in the computer in Chicago in the hotel. And we tried to have it sent from my office but with no luck whatsoever. Now, Sharon just gave me a very nice introduction and frequently people say well how should you like to be introduced as Mr. Schneider, et cetera, and it really doesn't make any difference to me but I once about a few months ago spoke to the, the Marines, the US Marine War College. And they're very careful about titles and they wanted to be sure that they had it right, so they asked whether I should be introduced as Dr. Schneider, I have an honorary degree, whether Director Schneider because is used to be director of the Peace Square, the honorable Mr. Schneider because if you're confirmed by the United States senate, you can be, put the honorable before your name, or, Mr. Schneider, and so I said, I really would prefer the honorable Mr. Dr. Schneider. Now I was kidding. But you wanna know how I was introduced, at the Marine War College? Precisely, now, since we're sort of, I gather this really is part of the University of Iowa campus even those this is the council of foreign relations and I'm pleased to be here, so I'll tell you another little story, George Shultz when he was Secretary of State was once asked, what's the difference between managing the private sector government and academia. And he replied, reportedly, it's sort of like this, in the private sector you have to be very careful about what you ask people to do, because they're going to go out and do it, and expect to get paid for it. So be sure that you ask them to do what you want. In government you don't have to worry about that. You ask people to do something, check back a couple of months later, and they're still having meetings, and nothing's happened. In the university, you ask some people to do something and they look at you strangely and say, who the heck do you think you are giving us orders? So with that, let me just say that I'm very pleased to be here, and let me give you some sense about how the international crisis group operates. I've been with them for now almost seven years, I left the Peace Core on January 20th 2001, and two months later I started, at the international crisis group. The group itself came into being in 1995-1996. And it was after the tragedies in Srebrenica, and the genocide in Rwanda. And several people who had just traveled to Yugoslavia, former Yugoslavia, included former senator George Mitchell, former congressman Steve Solars, several career ambassadors, Morta Bromwitz who was then the President of the Corde in Delmont for Peace, and they essentially came to the conclusion that at the end of the Cold War, the major powers no longer focused on some of minor problems in small countries that didn't play a part in the strategic confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union, since the Cold War had ended. And so they decided to create this organization, Non Governmental, multinational, non profit that identifies and analyzes the drivers of international conflict that attempts to design policies to control them, or ideally to prevent them before they occur. And then attempts to advocate directly to decision makers around the world, the recommendations for policy changes, that they think will prevent conflict. Should we turn it? - [Sharon Benzoni] Sorry. - [Mark Schneider] Now in any case, you can hear me I speak loud. They basically decided that that situation was unacceptable so they organized in a way that was designed to have field based analysis, our people are located on the ground in some 60 countries. They usually operate from a sub regional base, but many times as well we have an individual sometimes known sometimes not in the country who works with us as a researcher. So just to give you an example, our Latin American program is based in Columbia in Bogotá but from there they travel to Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. In South Asia our program is located in Islamabad. But we have somebody, small office in Kabul, we have an office in Nepal, we have individuals in Bangladesh, and from there they cover the rest of South Asia. You know, really, the value of the organization rests on the quality of those individuals who are enormously talented. At the same time enormously courageous. Trust me you cannot believe the places that they go the US government will not permit any of its officials to go in Afghanistan for example, US aid is locked up inside the embassy and they can only travel to the countryside with major convoys and the New Zealand expert who runs our Kabul office drives around with an Afghan driver to places where, believe me, I, I'm afraid to go. But what they do then is they do research, on what the situation is, what are the conditions that are producing the likelihood of conflict, and then they, together with the program directors for the region, the vice presidents and the presidents of the crisis group, prepare policy recommendations. We publish these, about 90 a year, and everything's on our website. Www.crisisgroup.org. And then we have four advocacy offices now, Washington, the headquarters of the organization is based in Brussels, the President, former foreign minister of Australia Gareth Evans, and that's where our major office is located, but they then do advocacy with the European Union. And with the other European countries. I run the Washington office, and our advocacy office focuses on the US government the World bank, the case of Latin America, the organization of American States, the American development bank and in New York we have a third advocacy office that engages with the United Nations. We brief the security council on virtually every conflict related action that they take ahead of time. And always before they travel, they ask for a briefing from us in terms of what our people on the ground are saying. And what we attempt to do in these reports is identify two things. One are the structural clauses that produce conflict. And the second is what are the triggers, what are the events, flood election the denial or repression of human rights in a given instance that are likely to trigger the kind of violence that we've seen, unfortunately, too many places. And by identifying those factors, hopefully enable governments, the international community, to see what precise kinds of diplomatic and other interventions, particularly economic and social and development assistance and programs could be brought to bearer to prevent those factors and those elements from producing conflict. And where conflict exists, to try and help bring an end. What we say we do, therefore, is the following. We say we ring early warning bells, through these reports, and we put out also a monthly crisis watch that sort of gives you a headline from our people in the field about what's going on in that subregion. We contribute on both process and substance on peace negotiations. We engage with the variety of facilitators who are working now in Uganda in trying to end the conflict with the LRA, we're involved with Kofian who just became a member of our board, I should say our board is rather unique. It's made up now of about 45 individuals, the two co-chairs always one European one US, the European is Chris Patten, who's now Director of Oxford and who used to be the last government general for the British in Hong Kong. And who also was the, the secretary of foreign affairs for the European Union at one point. I won't touch the podium. And then the other co-chair is Tom Pickering who was former under secretary of State for Political Affairs. I think probably he was ambassador in more countries than any other single individual in our diplomatic history he was ambassador in the United Nations in Russia in Israel, in Jordan, in El Salvador, in Nigeria, and then I forget. But that gives you some idea. So Kofian became a member of the board this year, we have the former president of Chili, Ricardo Lagos, Josh Cofisher, former foreign, we have about, 10 former heads of state, about an equal number of former foreign ministers, about an equal number of former defense ministers from around the world. And so we engage with them when they have been called in to help try and facilitate the peace process. We then provide detailed analysis on, on sort of, not just the country but factors that affect a variety of countries, security sector reform, how do you do in a post conflict situation, what are the things that we've learned from past experiences, what do you wanna avoid. Then we provide information that sometimes, no one else does. Last week, not last week, last month, we produced a report, in fact I have some copies of the executive summary on Taliban propaganda. What kind of propaganda is the Taliban using inside Afghanistan in order to try and generate political support for their actions. And about a year of so ago we did the same thing and what kind of use does Al Quaida in Iraq make of the Internet. We offer hopefully some kinds of strategic thinking on some of the issues, the frozen conflicts, between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The problems of the Iran nuclear issue. Before the United States decides to engage with the Europeans with Iran on trying to bring an end to the Iran nuclear Richmond program, we produced a report suggesting how this might be done. And obviously we strongly support a rules base rather than a force base international order. In particular we were very active in helping draft and ultimately lobby for the adoption at the United Nations general assembly two years ago something called the responsibility to protect, and the concept was, during the 90s there was a lot of argument about, when and who has the right to intervene, for humanitarian purposes. To stop an atrocity. The president of the crisis group, Gareth Evans, when he was vice chair of an international commission flipped it, and said no it's not a question of when you have the right to intervene. It's what is the responsibility of the international community to protect? To protect citizens, and when the nation state fails to meet that responsibility, what are the conditions under which the international community should intervene. Not intervene militarily necessarily. There's a whole range of other actions, diplomatic, economic, development. In which you try and engage to try and prevent the atrocities from occurring but when they occur then there's a point in which the international community has to consider, when authorized by the security counsel the use of military force but even then, I touched it. But even then, there are conditions it has to be proportionate force, you have to be clear that the use of force is only for the purposes of preventing the atrocities or the genocides from occurring in any case the responsibility to protect has been adopted and the issue now is what do you do next, how do you, how do you bring about its implementation. Now, let me come back to the forgotten war in Afghanistan. We've been there since November of 2001, that was the month that we issued our first report. Our second report essentially said, this is March 2002, securing Afghanistan, the need for more international action. In fact today, we face the reality of the failure of the international community, to provide that kind of action. What we're seeing now is the reality that the insurgency from sanctuaries in Pakistan, as well as from presents now, particularly in the East and South in Afghanistan is winning and when I mean winning, I don't mean taking over by military force Afghanistan. What I mean is preventing the stabilization of a legitimate government in Afghanistan, preventing reconstruction, preventing stability from coming to that country. And unfortunately we would argue that the lack of attention to critical issues as state building and stabilization, the refusal to commit the necessary military, political and financial resources, almost from the moment that the Taliban were forced out of office, before started government and out of Pakistan, has lead to the present mode-- - [Sharon Benzoni] Would you speak up for a little while, we'll be trying to-- - [Mark Schneider] Sure. In fact less than two weeks ago, the chairman to the joined chief of staff, Admiral Mullen, stated in an awkward, but rather revealing syntax that he was, and I quote, not convinced that we are winning. Now, that's a very strange way of describing a situation and in fact he said, we're running out of time in a new National Intelligence estimate that you'll be reading about shortly, covering Afghanistan, I'm told, is the most pessimistic since 2002. And I think it's important to recognize we're at this point not necessarily only because of the forces at work in Afghanistan, but because failures of policy, failures of policy by decision makers who we would argue took the right decision to go after Al Quaida and Taliban after 9/11, and then the wrong decision not to provide the necessary resources to fully stabilize and help Afghanistan rebuild after the Taliban was forced, was ousted. And I have some beautiful slides that show that unfortunately you're not gonna be able to see them, but I think that they're actually almost sufficiently clear and I'll explain, you can all see the blue. This is 2003. The blue is what the United Nations termed low risk. We can engage there, we can carry out reconstruction we can send civilian development teams there to work. The yellow was medium risk. Basically you have to be more careful. And the, what I suppose is peach, or almost orange, a very small number of districts in fact not even a single province at that point were what they had termed high risk. Where you couldn't go and stay and effectively carry out work. Well, and I'm just gonna show you but, you can see the change, from blue much more medium risk and much more high risk. Now they changed colors on me what can I tell you. This, and the reason is, because in 2005, I went there in 2004, I was in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2004, 2005, 2006, and last year. The green is now low risk. The light yellow or beige is now medium risk. But now they have two other colors. Because there is so many areas, they had to divide between high risk, and that was the, now the dark yellow, where you couldn't go, and the extreme risk which is here the pink, where no one can go, you can't even go in and go out, in terms of reconstruction. Now that's 2005. And I'm just gonna jump, this is 2007 all of the pink is extreme risk. These are the provinces along the Pakistan border. This is the Pashtun. This is the Pashtun area. This is where the Taliban has its base and this now is an area where the International Community cannot carry out sustained reconstruction efforts, and that's why I said earlier, that the insurgency was winning. Because if you can't carry out reconstruction and you can't carry out effective institution building at the local level in those communities then you're, unfortunately you're losing. This, they changed the colors again in 2008, this is June 2008. But you can see that in 2008 now, the area, every province along the Pakistan border in Afghanistan is now judged extreme risk where you cannot, civilian, humanitarian organizations cannot go. And just to give you an example. The international rescue committee has been in Afghanistan for, I would say, 20 years. And this August, if you look on that map, they were careful they were not in the areas of extreme risk along the border, they were operating in areas of medium risk, but they were in a province, the province, the Logar province right next to Kabul. And four of their workers were killed. And so they simply left Afghanistan. Now when organizations like that are unable even to work in the country, it tells you how difficult the situation is in terms of security. It also tells you how difficult the situation is going to be now to try and regain the capacity to help that country develop its institutions. An ability that we had in 2002, I would argue in 2003 and much of 2004, and then as a result of failing to use the time that we had and the opportunity that we had we're in the situation where we are now. And the result just to give you some quick sense about what the level of limited resources that were devoted during that time period. In that time period let's say 2002-2003-2004, the International Community committed $52 per Afghan citizen, with respect to reconstruction and development all non military issues. In Bosnia, a decade earlier, we committed $1,400 per Bosnian in Kosovo, we had 20 peacekeepers per thousand Kosovar Albanians. In Afghanistan we had two tents of one peacekeeper per thousand Afghan citizens. It simply wasn't enough and it's still not enough in terms of the level of commitment. The, when you look, I think we spent now, 50 billion dollars in Iraq on non military reconstruction economic and social investment since 2003. In Afghanistan it's 10 and half of that has not been able to be implemented, because of the level of insecurity. I wanna press this because it's crucial that you understand how desperate the situation is and at the same time how important it is that the international community reinforce its commitment. This is not a situation where well, we made mistakes and we should simply now leave. Because the fact is that security in Afghanistan relates to security in Iowa. That if you allow the Taliban and Al Quaida to once again take over a country like Afghanistan, they will plan and they will succeed in carrying out terrorist activities around the world. There's just no question. That's why it simply is not possible to walk away from Afghanistan. Now just to give you an idea, in the first eight months of this year, there were 113 US troops killed, compared to 111 all of last year. There are 40% more attacks by the insurgency in the first eight months of this year than against all of last year. The civilian deaths in Afghanistan in the first half of the year were approximately 1,500 about eight to nine hundred, were the direct result of Taliban and Al Quaida activities and they have been focused on carrying out attacks on soft targets. Bombs in markets, improvised explosive devices in areas where there are civilians. Trying to create the belief that the government of Afghanistan cannot protect their citizens. Problem as well though, is that about 580 of those civilian deaths were deemed to be the result of allied action or Afghanistan security forces. And the major cause of that was the skyrocketing increase in air strikes that the allied forces the coaliltion forces were using in 2006, seven and this year. In order to respond to the Taliban attacks. If you don't have enough troops on the ground, you wind up opting for air strikes and it's simply impossible to be as precise, and believe me they do everything they can I have no doubt about it, they do everything they humanely can, to prevent bombs from hitting either communities or areas where there are civilians. The problem is as humanely possible and they're just the stakes that are made. I think that it's important to understand as well that while that map indicates what the extreme risk areas are, the fact is that the Taliban now has been able to demonstrate a capability to go beyond those bordered provinces, so that they can reach into urban areas like Kabul. In February, I stayed in the serena hotel in Kabul in November, in February the foreign minister of Norway was staying there with the delegation. And they attacked the Serena and they killed about eight or nine people, and he just missed being blown up. So they have the ability to go into urban areas. One of the worst attacks that we've seen took place at the Indian embassy in July of this year, where 41 people were killed. And earlier in April, the stadium, they were having a ceremony, the president, of course, was there, the entire international community, and again they were able to carry out an attack. So they have demonstrated the ability now to move from the areas where along the border and to carry out specific attacks in different places outside, in urban areas in Afghanistan and that raises serious questions about what you do now. Let me just raise another issue which is of concern. I'm sort of giving you what the status is, what the concerns are, and I'm gonna come to what I think we need to do. One of the realities is that the failure to control the insurgency in Afghanistan relates to the failure to deal with the problem of opian poppy production in that country. 93% of the world's opium is produced in Afghanistan. In fact, and again, that same, strip of area along the border is really the highest area of production of opium poppy. Why? Because the Taliban essentially taxes the production of Opium in Afghanistan and where they don't tax it, they traffic it. So a substantial part of their revenues come from opium poppy production and the production of opium. And unfortunately for the first, not just two, but for the first four years, the US military, department of defense said, that's not our business. We're not gonna devote resources to doing anything to counter narcotics, and there was a bar, now just to give you an idea, the first time I went, I think it was 2003 and I met the, you know, ISAF, The International Security Assistance Force, NATO and the US military, and I asked them what they were doing about countering narcotics, why because, I've had a lot of experience in Columbia and it was clear in Columbia that the cocaine was financing all of the illegal armed groups, left and right. So my question was what is happening here? And they said we can't talk about it, we're not doing anything about it, that's not our responsibility. I said well what about if they're financing the Taliban? He said sorry we're barred. The fact is that at that time, if the US military stopped a truck filled to the top with opium, and it didn't have any guns. They would let that truck continue. Now that's changed. But that's three years. Now if they stop the truck they confiscate it and they turn it over to the Afghan counter narcotics police but they still don't actively try and find out who is producing the opium and they still don't try and track who are the leaders of the trafficking operations and they have more intelligence capability than anybody in Afghanistan and to me that's still a failure of policy. It's not a failure of capability, it's a failure of policy. And similarly, when you look at what's the major, what are the major elements of our counter narcotic policy in Afghanistan it's eradication, go into the fields and mow down the poppy plants. So what you're doing is you're using most of your resources when you look at the amount they're spending now for eradication, they fund a US contractor who funds individuals to go out and, roll over poppy fields. So you're going after the poorest Afghan farmers rather than saying who is doing the trafficking? And the fact is that there are unfortunately people who are in the Afghan government who have been corrupted, and are linked to drug trafficking and in some cases everybody knows who they are and our view is you start at the top. That until you have demonstrated political will to go after corrupt officials who are involved in drug trafficking it's gonna be very hard to convince local communities that when they see forces going in and eradicating their fields and that's their income, that it's okay, because they see guys driving around in SUVs and nobody's doing anything about it. So my, our view is that there needs to be a comprehensive counter narcotics policy but it has to be flipped. You have to focus on law enforcement and interdiction and in the case of the farmers you have to first provide some kind of alternative. And what I mean by alternative I mean alternative development that involves income generation for those farmers. Last year, 2007, the comparison between the value of wheat in a hectare and the value of opium was 10 to one. The value of opium was 10 times what the value of the wheat produced in a hectare. This year, it's between two and three times to one. Now is the time to go in and as I said earlier to sort of beat the traffickers at their own game. They offer these farmers, credit, seed, fertilizer upfront. They buy their product at the harvest, and they go to the farmer's field and they take it away the alternative development program, they don't provide all of the same credit upfront and they require the farmer to find his market. Well that's not gonna work. You need to have a much more expensive rural development program in Afghanistan to deal with that. I think it's about time for me to break. So let me just make one or two other points. And that is first, if we did everything right in Afghanistan strengthen the rule of law locally, strengthen the local government, went after corruption stop the counter narcotics, stop the narcotics problem, we still would have a real question about whether we would stop the insurgency, why. Because they have a safe sanctuary in Pakistan. Where they have gone and regrouped, retrained, recruited and planned attacks on US and coaliltion forces out of Afghans. And until those sanctuaries are ended, it's going to be very difficult to succeed in counter insurgency. That's our view. That's the view of everyone who's ever studied insurgencies around the world. The World Bank's done it, Grand has done it, if you look at any insurgency if they have a sanctuary it will be very difficult to defeat them. And unfortunately they have a sanctuary in Afghanistan, in Pakistan rather. Now I'm just gonna end by saying that we hope and we've prepared, obviously policy papers for whoever the next administration is in Washington that the next administration makes a major effort to develop a comprehensive unified policy aimed at halting the insurgency in Afghanistan and strengthening the Afghan government. And I say unified I mean United States, European Union, United Nations, together, not with different voices and different priorities but a single priority a single message and a single strategy for strengthening both institutions and hopefully, security and peace in Afghanistan, thank you. - [Sharon Benzoni] US media reported that various tribal leaders played a major role in driving out the Taliban. Why are they not playing a role in keeping them out now? - [Mark Schneider] I think to some degree that's correct. There are two problems, one is just that a lot of them have been both threatened and intimidated by the Taliban they haven't gotten the protection, particularly in the Pashtun area and they haven't received the kinds of support that they were hoping for, from the international community, and again, if you look at that map, one of the reasons that they haven't is because security because the international community didn't take the opportunity when there was security in those areas to invest and invest clearly, I think, in rural development and in strength of the local institutions. - [Sharon Benzoni] What do you feel are the prospects for the UN's millennium development goals in Afghanistan are they achievable and to what extend could their achievement reduce conflict and build practical communities? Peaceful communities, excuse me. - [Mark Schneider] And right now Afghanistan I think is 174th of 178 countries on the UN development, UNDP human development list, and I say that it would be, I'd love to see it happen it would be a miracle if they were able to achieve the millennium development goals, in the timeframe that's, that's anticipated. But I agree that if they were, it would go a long way to doing just that and I think that the effort needs to be made to help them progress towards those goals, recognizing that it's unlikely that they're gonna be able to be achieved in the timeframe stipulated. - [Sharon Benzoni] Thank you. Do you believe our NATO and other international allies are contributing appropriately to Afghanistan's reconstruction and security and if not, what can be done to convince them to increase their troops, funding, et cetera. - [Mark Schneider] I think the word appropriately the answer's no. I think the NATO countries should do more and I think that what really needs to happen is that there needs to be a way to convince them so that they can deal with their own constituencies politically who ask themselves why are we sending troops there? But we have to do something to remove the caveats that each country in NATO places on how their troops are going to be used. So some countries essentially say we'll send troops but only put them in those blue areas. Not in the areas that are at high risk or our troops can only be used in sort of static security positions but they can't go out and do combat patrols, so those, I basically think that the NATO commander should have the ability to deploy NATO forces wherever and whenever he feels they are needed and countries when they sign up, need to sign up fully, in the sense of, yes we're sending troops, they're under the NATO command they'll respond to the NATO commander, and I think, as I say I think what needs to be done is there needs to be a serious effort at political discussion in the NATO capitals about the relationship between security in Afghanistan and security in Europe. By the way Canada is doing, I say other countries, Canada, the UK, are doing the most, and I think that some of the other, New Zealand, Australia, they also put their forces into the harder areas. - [Sharon Benzoni] So there are a couple of questions about Opium. One of them says that the real markets for Opium are in the US and Europe and must involve corruption in institutions there, this person suggests that we legalize the drugs, tax 'em like alcohol and tobacco and then that way cut out the Taliban do you think this is a good idea? - [Mark Schneider] Most of the opium heroin use in the United States doesn't come from Afghanistan. But the market is definitely Europe, there's no question about it. That's where the bulk of Afghanistan of Opium goes although there's an increase in use in Afghanistan there's an increase in use in the countries around Afghanistan Russia as well is a major market. On the question of what do you do about, the whole question of how do you reduce demand for illegal drugs, I think the answer is that there's a strong argument that's been made on the question of legalization, politically, I don't think it's viable, I do think that you need to look at, in the case particularly of cocaine, and to some degree opium use as well, is distinguished between those who are addicts and need to be looked at from a public health perspective and those who are recreational users. And try and come up with, and use some of the, if you will, successful methods that have been used to get people off of chronic users in a health setting, rather than a criminal setting. - [Sharon Benzoni] So. In the current issue of Atlantic monthly, there is an article that advocates deploying counter terrorism and development forces at a village rather than regional level, do you agree? - [Mark Schneider] Very definitely. I mean I think that the problem, to some degree, with the question, original, first question about tribal leaders, is that we haven't done enough, we haven't been able to do enough because of the security situation to operate on a continuing basis at the village level. And particularly whether it's AID or whether it's the international rescue committee or CARE or the other NGOs that are working on development, it's very difficult for them to get to the local level now in those areas. They're doing a lot more in the areas that were low risk. But yes there needs to be a major expansion, what I would call local, rural, integrated development. - [Sharon Benzoni] So I think we'll do two more questions. The first one's another opium question. Other than opium, what are the primary sources of income for the Taliban and how are these sources being addressed? - [Mark Schneider] I think that most people would argue that the other sources of income, for the Taliban are coming from outside from those who support Islamic extremism. That there is some kidnapping going on inside Afghanistan but the three sources that I've seen referred to are external support from some countries and individuals in groups, some of the Al Quaida money goes to Taliban who are supporting religious, the Taliban extremist ideology. Revenues from opium and revenues from kidnapping and extorsion. - [Sharon Benzoni] So one final set of questions. Who funds your organization and why? And how do you measure your effectiveness or ineffectiveness in influencing decision makers and what improvements, if any, should you make? - [Mark Schneider] We take checks. The reality of those, the little handout there, those describe who funds us, but it's essentially anybody who's legitimate and wants to sign a check, we get about 45% of our money from the international, equivalent of USA idea. The largest single donor right now, is CEDA from Canada. And then I believe it switches year by year, then it's Norway, I think it goes Canada, Norway, the UK, Switzerland, the other Scandinavian countries, then USA iD. We have 17 I think this year, different government, Australia, that provide some resources. And then foundations. The largest foundation donor is Hope for Society Institute George Sorros who has been a member of the board, he was one of the founders. And then again, 22 foundations, the McArthur is a big founder now, but we've had Ford, Rockefeller, PEW, Helic, I don't remember the others. But a lot of 'em are listed there. And then individuals. Individuals who are members or our advisory committee and our board frequently make contributions. Those are the sources of funding. The other question. How do you measure how effective or ineffective the organization is in terms of the influence in the decision makers. There are sort of three things that we do one is that we hope to influence the context in which they're debating policy. So that if I, I know a lot of people in different parts of US government if they tell me that they're bosses just read the crisis group report on Haiti or on Georgia and they ask them questions about it, that's influencing the process by which decisions are being made. I think that's one way that we measure our effectiveness is that we go out and we sort of, we try and do certain kinds of surveys about who's reading our report. The other is that we do have our recommendations we do try and internally ask ourselves, have these recommendations been adopted or have portions of it been adopted. And at a point at which we were doing some quantitative we were about 30% specific recommendations. Effectively debate I'd say very high. We do a very good job in, and it's the credibility of people on the ground, believe me they're the ones who should get credit. There's not a time when I go to talk to assistant secretary or somebody in the security council over at the Hill where they haven't, either, read in detail the report or more often, they have read the executive summary and the recommendations and engage with that. So I say we have a sense that our reports are very definitely part of the process hopefully educating some of the decision makers and to some degree influencing. And let me give you some examples of influencing. If you look again at the back of our brochure and you look at the former heads of state ministers we have them call their colleagues if you will on specific instances. We were quite concerned this week in Sri Lanka, that the government of Sri Lanka told the United Nations and all the humanitarian organizations to leave a particular area. And the implication was that they were going to carry out a military attack in that area. From the description of what we'd learned, we were afraid it was going to be, that the civilians who lived there where going to be in great jeopardy. And so we went directly to the government of Sri Lanka and urge that they not do that that they allow International Community through the red cross and other organizations to be there, and then we went directly to the secretary general of the UN went to the congress here, went to heads of state in other countries and they contacted the government of Sri Lanka. And the International Community and Red Cross has been allowed to stay. So, was it us, I can't tell you, but that kind of did it. And others, there are instances where we're able to get legislation adopted, amendments to appropriation goals and there are numerous putting conditions on the way military aid goes, attempting to focus, let's say focus US assistance on institution building in some areas, focus on, two examples. In Afghanistan and in Haiti, two of the most important things are establishing functioning police forces, but they have to be functioning police forces that are clean. So we urged and we got legislation adopted in the US that conditions the aid in Haiti on whether there was a vetting process of those individuals both for corruption and for human rights violations. In the case of Afghanistan the United Nations security council resolution, a year and a half ago, for the first time said, that in support to the development of a police force in Haiti, these issues need to be taken into account. And I'm pleased to say that the International Community has adopted that and they've begun to vet the police district by district in Afghanistan, retrained those who were clean, and put them back into the district. That's, those are steps in the right direction. - [Sharon Benzoni] May I say a concluding word or two? - [Mark Schneider] Hmm? - [Sharon Benzoni] May I say a concluding word or two? - [Mark Schneider] Sure sure sure. - Thank you very much Mr.Schneider for sharing with us your thoughts on Afghanistan, the forgotten war, one behalf of the Iowa city foreign relations council I'd like to acknowledge our gratitude by presenting you with the coveted foreign relations council mug suitable for coffee, tea or any other beverage of your choice. Thank you all for coming, if you are interested in supporting the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council and enjoy hearing us on the radio or watching us on TV, please call the office, 335-0351, thank you we are adjourned, return your name tags.