Afghan leader speaks to crowd at IU

The young-looking man with growing streaks of gray in his slicked black hair confidently strolled down the stairs to a podium at the front of the classroom. The 75 people in attendance waited patiently for him to finish pouring a bottle of Dasani water in a glass before beginning his lecture on the state of Afghanistan.\nA possible yawner, except for the fact the lecturer was the First Secretary to the Embassy of Afghanistan Hekmat Karzai.\n"Are they ready for elections?" Karzai rhetorically asked the attentive crowd about the people of Afghanistan. Most of the hour was spent discussing the realities Afghanistan is facing a year before their first elections since the Taliban was ousted.\nKarzai's job is simple: keep people interested in Afghanistan. Something that wasn't too easy before the latest regime change Karzai discovered while in Germany.\n"Which part of Germany is that?" someone asked him when Karzai told the person where he was from.\n"Oh, about 30 miles off of Berlin." he replied.\n"The positive is that people can now figure out where Afghanistan is on the map," Karzai said.\nKarzai was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan, but fled with his family to Pakistan after the Soviet invasion where he lived with his cousin Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan. The future president was Karzai's first English instructor, a language he is now proficient in along with Pashto, Dari and Urdu.\n"(President Karzai)'s almost like an uncle to me," Karzai said.\nKarzai goes back to Afghanistan every three months or so to refamiliarize himself with the conditions. While there, he said it was especially invaluable to talk with the individual Afghan to get an idea of the difficulties they face. \n"The best way to stay updated is to get on the ground," Karzai said.\nAnd the difficulties facing Afghanistan are immense. The countries is home to 10 billion landmines (the heaviest population in the world), a healthcare sector from "biblical times" (one out of five children dies before the ago of five) and serious security and reconstruction issues.\n"We haven't really changed any of these sad facts," Karzai said.\nIn order for this to change, Karzai said Afghanistan needs more funding from the international community, including the U.S. He compared the current aid as a "drop in a bucket."\nThe U.N. originally designated $4.5 billion to help rebuild Afghanistan, but a lot of that has been trapped in bureaucratic red tape, Karzai said.\n"4.5 billion is hardly enough money," Karzai said, pointing out that JFK International Airport cost $6 billion to renovate.\n"The United States can do more," Karzai said.\nKarzai said he sees three potential destinies for Afghanistan. His hope is that it becomes stable and prosperous, but at the current rate he believes it will continue to be a developing country or, ever worse, become a narco-mafia state.\nAfter the lecture, a question and answer session took place.\nGraduate student Ben Thorne was one of the students who participated. He was concerned about the social fragmentation in Afghanistan and asked Karzai about it, who gave him a thorough answer, but not one to his liking.\n"I was a little troubled by his answer," Thorne said. "It didn't display a sense of appreciation for the depth of the problem."\n"Well, you have to keep in mind he's bound to represent his government and answer to more diplomatic," Thorne continued.\n"My job is to represent my government in the best way I possibly can," Karzai said. "I want to keep the world interested in Afghanistan."\nKarzai also read a question from a pink piece of paper an older man from Tajikstan handed him asking him about the drug problem in Afghanistan.\nAnother questioner asked Karzai about his thoughts about how America has handled post-Taliban Afghanistan, a question that brought a smile to Karzai's face.\n"Evaluate it? You mean rank it? I'm not being recorded am I?" he asked grinning.\nHe then continued. "They (U.S. government officials) have all assured Afghanistan will not be forgotten."\nOverall, Karzai said he was pleased with how the lecture went.\n"It went really, really well," Karzai said, who has also spoken at Berkeley, Harvard and Stanford. "The amount of students attending was overwhelming."\nKarzai said it was important for him to establish relationships with institutes of high learning.\nAfghanistan's own institutes of higher learning are in shambles. Most of the books at Kabul University were destroyed to keep workers warm during the winter.\n"I've seen kids studying in tents," Karzai said.\nAssistant Director of the Summer Slavic Workshop Jonathan Ludwig, who helped bring Karzai to IU, also said he thought the lecture went well.\n"This was a good general address to a general knowledge type of audience," Ludwig said.\nKarzai said he hopes that students who are affected by the lecture will write their Congressmen and ask for more thought toward Afghanistan.\n"Once they hear the reality, they try to go out and help," Karzai said.\nHowever, the people who can most help are those in power in the international community.\n"The real test for the international community is in Afghanistan," Karzai said. "If they fail, then there is no assumption they will be successful in Iraq." \n"I wish the same thing for Iraqi people that I do for Afghans"