'Meet the Press' transcript for Nov. 30, 2008

AMB. JAWAD: The people of Afghanistan have done their job as far as electing a president, a parliament in a democratic government. What my government needs is more resources to deliver services to provide protection to our people. So in many areas that--where there is lack of delivery of the services because of the lack of human capital on the part of the Afghan people or the shortage of resources, the Taliban are making a comeback. It is not--they do not provide a vision for the future of the country; therefore, more investment in building and education in Afghanistan is very important. The future of Afghanistan, of the new generation of Afghan people, of Afghan women, will depend on further investing in education to train a new generation of Afghan leaders and also to provide for true gender equality.

MR. BROKAW: And, Mrs. Bush, at a recent meeting that President Karzai addressed, a lot of women stood up and challenged him about law and order in Afghanistan. They wanted really to crack down on these terrible, terrible crimes against women in that country. Do you think that we have to find a whole new model for dealing with women's rights there that we've really reduced it to a military equation on the one hand and relying on Kabul on the other? Are we going to have to find a new model in the rural areas?

MS. BUSH: Look. We have, we have a model that you didn't mention and that's the building of civil society. And many, many people from around the world are working on building civil society, building schools, making sure girls are educated. When you look at the whole situation, Afghanistan is a country that was totally decimated. Many, many people lost all the years that they would've been in school. They were never educated. The population is generally not skilled or educated. There are jobs, there are jobs that people could do if they had the skills for them, but they're--but people are not educated. So what we have to do, what the Ambassador just said, is do whatever we can to educate people as quickly as we can. And the U.S. government, working with the Afghan government, working with a lot of people in civil society, the Afghan American Women's Council, for instance, who just returned home this week from a trip to Afghanistan, are doing, is trying to do teacher training as fast as possible. We built early on a teacher training institute so that women would have a safe dorm to stay in when they came into Kabul to be educated to teach. So their family members will let them leave their provinces and come in to be educated and then they were educated and went back to their own provinces to try to train teachers in a cascading effect, train as many teachers as possible.

But it is true that with security issues like they are, NGOs and a lot of civil society that are very, very active in other parts of the world and would love to be active in Afghanistan, are afraid to send workers there to work on all these ways that we can help both with microfinance for enterprise for women, literacy. Literacy training already that's set up in Afghanistan is set up to teach life skills. As you learn to read your text that you're reading is based on life skills, health information, all the things that mothers would need to know to either be able to get a job, and of course, there are many, many widows with children in, in Afghanistan, or to be able to start some sort of little enterprise so that they can support their family. And all those life skills are what they missed while they--missed learning to read and do math and all the other things that are part of a primary education.

MR. BROKAW: You mentioned NGOs, nongovernmental organizations.

MS. BUSH: Yes.

MR. BROKAW: I had the privilege of being in a meeting of the International Rescue Committee when you addressed it a few years ago here in Washington.

MS. BUSH: Yes. Uh-huh.

MR. BROKAW: The IRC just had a terrible, terrible event...

MS. BUSH: That's right.

MR. BROKAW: ...in Afghanistan.

MS. BUSH: Hm.

MR. BROKAW: Four of our aid workers were killed there...

MS. BUSH: Hm.

MR. BROKAW: ...including three women who were plainly targeted because of the work that they were doing with women.

MS. BUSH: Hm. Mm-hmm.

MR. BROKAW: The IRC had no choice but to suspend its operations...

MS. BUSH: Mm-hmm. That's right.

MR. BROKAW: ...for security reasons.

MS. BUSH: I mean, that's, that's what a lot of NGOs have done and it's a very, very difficult issue because these are isolated. It's not everyone that that happens to. But, but just like you said, a lot of international aid organizations are targeted, and so they don't go there, even though that's really what the kind of help that the people of Afghanistan need the most. Their cold winter's coming on. Afghanistan can have very, very brutal winters. A lot of parts of Afghanistan are totally isolated once the snow has closed the roads that are, that are there. And we're working, along with the government of Afghanistan and international organizations, the U.N., for instance, to make sure there's plenty of wheat in Afghanistan before the cold winter comes on.

But there are a lot of problems, but we need to look for a lot of different situations, and certainly one of them is the training of the police of Afghanistan. The training of a national army so that they can do those sort of jobs themselves. And then, really, I think another thing that's very important is for the people of Afghanistan to stand up, just like the protesters protested terrorist attacks, so say, "We don't want to live like this. We want to be able to build our country. We don't want to be afraid. We want our girls to be educated and we want a decent life."

MR. BROKAW: It's very hard, though, isn't it in a rural village, Ambassador and Mrs. Bush?

MS. BUSH: It's very hard.

MR. BROKAW: I mean, if you're a male in a rural village, and I've been in those villages...

MS. BUSH: Mm-hmm.

MR. BROKAW: ...and the U.S. Army comes in during the day and says we want to help you, we'll set up a clinic, we'll do whatever we need to do. Night falls.

MS. BUSH: Mm-hmm.

MR. BROKAW: The Americans go back to their base. Guess who arrives next?

MS. BUSH: Yeah, sure. And they target the people who said, "OK, good, let's build a house."

MR. BROKAW: Right. So how do we get around that? I mean, that seems to me to be a conundrum that needs either a lot of new resources that is poured into it, poured into it.

MS. BUSH: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

MR. BROKAW: ...or you need a new model for dealing with this in some...

MS. BUSH: Well, of course we need resources, and the United States is--has supplied a lot of resources, financial resources to Afghanistan. And I urge the United States and the international community to not quit, you know. We need to continue to do that. But it'll take time, it'll take reconciliation. Maybe there are ways to be able to reconcile some of these groups. A lot of them are--cross the border from Pakistan. They, they, they think that these young people who were--or people who were arrested that had thrown the acid on the girls' faces were Afghans, but they came across the border from Pakistan.

MR. BROKAW: And apparently, they were paid a reward for doing it.

MS. BUSH: You know, and people need jobs. I mean, they're, they're desperate.

AMB. JAWAD: And, and also, we should add this, the issue of the terrorist sanctuaries.

MS. BUSH: Mm-hmm.

AMB. JAWAD: We have to really make sure that the ideological, financial and logistical support that's available to the terrorist groups still in the region will dry up. In many instances, they are capitalizing on poverty and ignorance. And if you give the people a hope, there's nothing else that will drive them to these criminal groups.

MR. BROKAW: But some of this is rooted in the Islamic religion as well. If you go into the rural areas and into the villages, you find a lot of fathers and husbands who believe strongly in the traditional interpretation of the Quran and the place of the women in their society, and so they're not much encouraged about doing a lot for the women in their family. Isn't that a big part of the problem?

AMB. JAWAD: Exactly. No, no, this is, this is separate from terrorism. Of course, where the extremism is wrong interpretation of religion, but here what is needs--what needs to be done is to change gradually the culture and the tradition, and the culture and tradition could be changed only through education, not through a decree by the government. It, it--really, we have to invest further to educate both men and women about the rights of women. And, and this is--this will be a gradual process with heavy investment on education and more importantly, opportunities for women to have a job. If, if women brings some sort of income to home, whole...(unintelligible)...will change automatically. And these are the kind of programs that we are implementing, with the assistance of the first lady, in Afghanistan.

MR. BROKAW: General David McKiernan, who is running American military operations there, I heard him in a briefing the other night saying we have an absence of human capital. All the warriors, the accountants, the teachers have left the country.

MS. BUSH: That's right.

MR. BROKAW: We have to build a...

MS. BUSH: And they left a long time ago. They...

MR. BROKAW: Right.

MS. BUSH: It's not--you know, and a lot of people have come back, of course. There are Afghans who have come back from--who left, you know, before the Taliban really even. But of course there are a lot who haven't come back. And can you blame them? I mean, it's a very, very difficult life. And people who've built their lives in another country, in the United States or in Europe, you know, it's, it's hard--it's a sacrifice for them to go back.

MR. BROKAW: But do we have to have a new international model? Most of the emphasis, understandably, has been on the military equation, trying to shut off the Taliban in Pakistan and fight them on the ground in, in Afghanistan itself. Should we be going to our allies and saying, "Look, we have to step up here on building roads and on building markets and on building schools?"

MS. BUSH: Sure. And on electricity and infrastructure. I mean, all of those things. Afghanistan needs everything. There's no infrastructure. There's not just not expensive infrastructure, like sewage and water treatment and electricity, but there's no infrastructure of laws. And you know, all of those things take time. And, and we can--we need to help however we can. But I will say, there are military groups, the PRTs, the provisional reconstruction teams, that are there from many, many countries--I don't, maybe 18? Is it that many?

AMB. JAWAD: Forty countries have troops in Afghanistan.

MS. BUSH: Yeah. But that have these...

AMB. JAWAD: But 18 PRTs, yes.

MS. BUSH: ...PRTs that are building schools, that are working to train policemen, for instance. There are a lot of civilians from the United States I've met when I went to the police training institute where I met the women police officers. The, the policemen that were there, some were from Texas, the trainers that were there helping train. So there are many people who are doing whatever they can. But you're right, how can we increase every one of those, every piece of it, including the civilian people that help, and then how--you know, what more can the PRTs, these provisional reconstruction teams, do to help educate Afghanis so that they can do what they want to do for their country and what we know they want to do.

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