Episode 50. USAID & War Zones: Iraq and Afghanistan with Senior Mission Directors Bambi Arellano and Ken Yamashita

Episode Transcript:

Deborah McCarthy: [00:00:13] From the American Academy of Diplomacy. This is the General and the Ambassador. Our podcast brings together senior US diplomats and senior military leaders in discussions about their partnerships overseas and tackling some of our toughest national security problems. You can find all our podcasts as well as information on our guests and much more on our website:  GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.Org. My name is Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, and I'm the producer and host of the series. Today we will take a slightly different tack. We will focus on the role of development assistance as a tool of US national security and on the work of the United States Agency for International Development in conflict zones, particularly Afghanistan and Iraq. We are joined by two former senior US Foreign Service officers who are veterans of the US Agency for International Development. Hilda Arellano or Bambi Arellano, as she is called, and Ken Yamashita. Bambi Arellano served in senior positions at USAID across the globe. From 2012 to 2013. She was the ambassador ranked coordinator for development and economic affairs at the US Embassy in Afghanistan. She also served as mission director in Egypt, Iraq, Peru, Budapest and Ecuador, as well as counselor for USAID in Washington. Most recently, she was the director of the Scholars in the Nation's Service Initiative at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. Ken Yamashita served 25 years as a Foreign Service officer with USAID. He was the ambassador and coordinator for Economic Assistance, Rule of Law and Law Enforcement at the US Embassy in Afghanistan. Just previously, he served as the USAID mission director in that same country. He also served as mission director in Colombia and in Kosovo and as senior deputy assistant administrator in the Bureau for Europe and Eurasia. After Afghanistan, he was the acting associate for global operations at the Peace Corps. Currently, he is an executive mentor and coach for USAID to start out. I want to ask both of you, can you explain how US development assistance helps advance US national security interests in general terms?

Bambi Arellano: [00:02:30] I think there is an assumption behind the US help abroad that countries that are prosperous and peaceful and serve their citizens well will be more stable and friendly to the interests of the United States. We will have allies that look more like us and not allies that look less like us. I think that is what development basically is about in terms of national interest.

Ken Yamashita: [00:03:05] Maybe I could just add and put it in the context of a story. In Colombia, for example, imagine a ten year old boy being recruited by the military contingent of the terrorist group known as the Armed Forces of Colombia. And this terrorist group is intent on doing severe damage to Colombia, as well as to the allies of Colombia, which would include the United States. So our military works with the Colombian army to defeat this insurgency and then steps in to work in the aftermath of rebuilding Colombia, following the insurgency. So by the time we get there, by the time the insurgency over, this ten year old boy is now 25 and age 25, he knows nothing about how to live, if you will, a normal life and society getting up in the morning, getting dressed, going to work, getting paid, but only once a week with a check, opening up a bank account and so on. Much of what the Colombian government does is to try to reintegrate that person into Colombian society and is a critical partner with the Colombian government. What the US State Department and the US military and others, we work together to make sure that peace and stability that Bambi talked about is something that endures long after the conflict is over.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:04:32] Well, I wanted to ask you also, USAID works as part of US embassies overseas. And before we get into Afghanistan, can you give us a sense of how USAID works within the missions? And we could use examples like South Africa, Colombia, whichever post you want to refer to.

Ken Yamashita: [00:04:51] One of the things that we work closely with the host country government and with the US government, and so one of the first elements that's very important is to ensure the confluence of interests between the host government and the US government and of course the communities where we serve. We want to push forward the notion that when we started, which is a more stable. And peaceful country is of benefit to all of us. In order for that to happen, we need to have not just infrastructure and construction like schools and roads and hospitals, but also systems and organizations that are functioning. That means, if you will, a central bank that works well, a private sector that is functioning well and a civil society that is able to hold government accountable for actions. All of those elements require skill, require capacity and require funding. Oftentimes, the government is not able to provide that, and that is where aid is able to help. One of the biggest differences with Afghanistan is that for the most part, we work in countries after a conflict is over. Would there be Colombia or Kosovo, which is the two countries that I'm familiar with? The conflict is over. The reconstruction has started as well. Has the reconstruction not just of infrastructure, as I mentioned, but also with systems. One of the big differences in Afghanistan is to try to do the same while there is still an ongoing conflict.

Bambi Arellano: [00:06:20] The other piece, which I think is very important, is that USAID also responds to emergencies and crises for the US government at the embassy level. So if there is a pandemic, as there is right now, if there is an earthquake, if there is a flood, if there's a major disaster, USAID is normally the lead agency on those issues. Having said that, all coordination, of course, is done through the US ambassador and the role of the ambassadors is absolutely crucial.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:06:58] Well, you both worked in senior positions at the US Embassy in Afghanistan and want to dive more deeply into the challenges of working in a war zone. First of all, I want to ask you, what were your first impressions about the scope of the challenge in that country compared with your other postings? And I know, Bambi, you had served in Iraq earlier as mission director.

Bambi Arellano: [00:07:19] What I discovered going into Iraq, which was in 2006 after the US entry into that country, was that you had a middle class country that had been through years of conflict, but especially the toppling of most recently of Saddam Hussein. So it was a middle class country that really deteriorated very, very suddenly. What you will do in a situation like that is very different from what you would do in a country like Afghanistan, which really was one of the poorest countries in the world.

Ken Yamashita: [00:07:55] As Bambi says, not only is it that every country is different, I think every time in the same country is also different. Oftentimes, as I prepared for my time in Afghanistan, discussions were about here's how things were before and therefore now or another variation on that is you have been serving in Columbia. It will do you well when you go to Afghanistan. Well, the fact of the matter is that neither time nor Columbia experience really there were useful. But I will not try to compare the two countries, the levels of skill, the levels of capacity, the maturity, if you will, of the institutions were vastly, vastly different. Afghanistan is a country in addition to everything else, has multiple cultural roots, multiple factions. It's very tribal. And so the concept of one nation state is not a concept that is necessarily shared by all the different communities. So starting with that and forging one national strategy, if you will, is exceptionally difficult.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:09:05] Well, as is understand, it was no stranger to Afghanistan. Usaid built a lot of the infrastructure in the country before the Soviets came in in 79. When you arrived, was there anything left that you could build on use?

Ken Yamashita: [00:09:20] I think that there something that is instructive is that it's essentially 20 years from 79 to 2002 conflict, just wave after wave, destruction after destruction. So it's not just that physical infrastructure was destroyed. It's also that the institutions were destroyed. People had left, or most unfortunately and tragically had been killed in conflict. So that by the time we arrived for the second time in 2002, there were some individuals that we had interacted with in the past, but many had already left. Much of the infrastructure had to be either rehabilitated or built up again. So it was a very difficult process to get there.

Bambi Arellano: [00:10:07] I first went overseas to work in the early 1970s. One of the countries I was given the option of going to was Afghanistan, which at that time was a model for rural development and development of farming communities because it had a very strong community based agricultural marketing and production system through cooperatives. And these were recognized outside of the country. So I just did want to make that point, reinforce what Ken says. That was the 70 seconds. Then came the invasion and the late 70 seconds, and the next 2 to 3 decades up until this day have basically been of conflict and tremendous setbacks.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:10:54] Well, Ken, you serve three years in Afghanistan. Think that's the longest tour I've ever heard of anybody serving in that country. You were there 2011 to 2014. What kind of development strategy was USAID pursuing at that time?

Ken Yamashita: [00:11:08] One of the challenges that faces anywhere but certainly in Afghanistan is the longer time period that is required for gestation of project to settle and to make its way into the community and get that true buy in. Oftentimes we think about a linear process where we go from conflict with sector stabilize and we reconstruct and their development and so on. The reality is that it's not linear at all. It's simultaneous and it's often backtracking so that while we are starting to work on what we might consider a stabilization project, then we need to return back to a conflict situation. And unfortunate example is the roads. We come to an agreement with the community, we start to build a road, but then the insurgency comes back and blows up the road. And so we're back to first defeating the enemy and then starting all over with the road. How many times can we repeat and do again before we say enough is enough?

Deborah McCarthy: [00:12:13] As I understand, our military wanted USAID to build roads, but as you said, it takes a while. You have to work with the community, and also the Taliban was blowing them up. So how did you resolve that pressure from our military for you guys to build roads?

Ken Yamashita: [00:12:30] In my experience, I would say that one of the biggest challenges that we faced in Afghanistan was the not the policy interagency agreement at the White House, national security, and not at the embassy, but very much when it comes down to operational processes. So we might we, the military and USAID would agree, for example, that a community needs a road and the enemy is defeated, the military moves on. And so we start to build a road. But before we build a road, we need further consultation with the community. How wide is the road going to be? What kind of traffic is going to be on the road? Where is it going to lead? Should it include other villages nearby and so on? So all of these things require conversation, consultation, agreement. We want to do what we can to make sure that the road endures after it's built. By the time we really start to build the military's three villages ahead of us and asking, okay, where's the next road?

Deborah McCarthy: [00:13:33] Bambi, When you arrived in Afghanistan in 2012 to be the ambassador level coordinator for all economic assistance, how did you work to prioritize and deconflict all the programs? Because you had USAID, Department of Agriculture, other donors, Department of Defense. There were a lot of actors there.

Bambi Arellano: [00:13:52] There's a little bit of everyone wanting to be part of the shiniest penny when you go into these conflict zones and everybody realizes how important the effort is. Everybody was. Getting their own pot of money. What that meant on the ground is we had to spend an inordinate amount of time coordinating with each other, making sure we were not doing two things in the same community that were exactly the same. It was not easy, especially because there were such a large number of DOD entities, Department of Defense entities also working on the ground. They held separate meetings. We were only the civilian agencies. Department of Defense had its own pots of money and we would have to hold separate meetings, usually bigger meetings with the military, to make sure that we were all on the same page.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:14:45] So even though commanders had what were called those commander's emergency funds, this wasn't coordinated in that first large meeting. You had to meet with them again to talk about what they were doing.

Bambi Arellano: [00:14:57] Yes, that's true.

Ken Yamashita: [00:14:58] In Afghanistan, one of the things that happened with respect to this commander's emergency fund is that much of that funding, certainly initially, although later it devolved to a more centralized decision making. But initially, the decisions with respect to how those funds were going to be utilized were delegated down to the field commanders. And so when the field commander met with the community leader and decided that an irrigation ditch was needed, the commander literally had funds in his back pocket. It was a difficult process of coordinating with how he views the world, if you will. You can't just hand out the money. You have to think it through. You have to put a program together. Et cetera. Et cetera. And so that level of coordination was definitely difficult and continued to be difficult on the civilian side. When I took over after Ben left, the ambassador asked that I also coordinate all the law enforcement agencies.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:15:59] Can I also want to ask you about another example that I found in your oral history, which is the issue of working to repair the turbines at the Kajaki Dam, which I understand is a critical dam for the country. The head of the US forces at the time, General Allen and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who was a US ambassador, both of whom, by the way, have been on the podcast, gave the go ahead and Marines were sent out to protect the dams so the work could start. But I gather Washington dithered. So how did this resolve itself?

Ken Yamashita: [00:16:30] The history of Kajaki goes back. You talk about the legacy from before the Russian invasion. The original dam, it's an earthen dam, was built with US funds, early days of the USAID, and it was always planned that there would be three big turbines to run the electrical dam, but at the time only two were needed so that the third turbine, the space was there, but it was never filled. By the time we went back in, we said, okay, we need that third turbine. But it ran into all kinds of problems. The least of which had to do with the insurgency still there, making our life difficult. So the military and US military in particular said, you know, there were serious and important military reasons to clear that valley. It's often said that the birthplace of the Taliban is in that valley. So the question is, is that valley also important for development? And when we looked at it, we came up with a positive answer that, yes, it was important. It's one of the few fertile valleys that Afghanistan has. It's a very arid country. And so working there was going to be important. And the dam, which would also serve as an irrigation dam and then an electrification dam, was going to be very, very important. The military, General Allen said, okay, we will protect the dam while you build it. But the decision to go ahead with the dam was a decision that was very difficult for AID because of the size and the complexity of the project. It's something we do very seldom.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:18:07] And it was decided to do the third turbine, correct?

Ken Yamashita: [00:18:11] Yes. Okay. Long after I'm gone. I heard about a year ago that it was up and running.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:18:15] Well, want to talk about an aspect of the work of USAID which don't think is well understood for working in conflict zones. Much of the work overseas that USAID does is done via contractors and negotiating contracts take time. And also, as you both have mentioned, you have to coordinate with local officials, local government. Our military field commanders wanted things done ASAP, as if USAID could just rapidly move money, people, bulldozers and so forth. But it doesn't work that way. Can you explain this a little bit to our listeners?

Bambi Arellano: [00:18:50] This is a perennial discussion, particularly with our military colleagues. Many of them, both the Iraq and Afghanistan experience, has been very, very educational for the US military to understand how different. Civilian procurement regulations are from some of the military procurement or purchasing regulations. They're just mandated in very different ways than the level of flexibility is completely different. Just as an example, when I got to Iraq in 2006, which was really the height of the insurgency and the violence in Iraq, one of the requests that the Iraqis had to the US government was for microfinancing programs because basically the banking system was not functioning. People needed money, they needed capital to get farms and businesses going again. What the US military was able to do through the commander's fund that Ken discussed earlier was literally put money into your backpack and go out and hand money out in communities to people for USAID to establish a microfinance program which would have allowed capital to flow in that same way, but probably in a more accountable way to the US taxpayer. It probably would have taken us at least a year to a year and a half, maybe even two years to get that volume of money out the door.

Ken Yamashita: [00:20:17] Maybe if I could just add to that with a bit of an example. Let's say that the discussion is that aid will need $100 million for agriculture in Afghanistan. When we go to the Hill to Congress and ask for that money, their first question is why? What are you going to do with it? How is it going to spend? Who's going to spend it? Where is it going to be spent? And at the end, how do we know that we got our money's worth? We know that those are questions that Congress is going to ask, so we need to go prepared with all of those answers, including those answers are things like these are the five locations. Let's say there are of physical, geographical, critical need for agriculture. So Congress finally gives the go ahead. We start our project and the project may be through contractors, it may be through local governments, it may be in different ways. But the fact of the matter is that those terms are very clearly outlined and set. Then the conflict starts and the military says, Oh, we need you to work over here. And it's someplace that we had not envisioned initially. In fact, we're not even sure that it makes sense from an agriculture perspective to work there. But nonetheless, it is for the insurgency as it is for a need is it can work there. The answer is not no, but the answer is it will take time. Because now we have to go back to Congress. As for an exception. Change the way we do business, maybe reduce funding from a community that we told them we would already fund so that we could use those funds elsewhere.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:21:59] That's a very important distinction, which I don't think has come out in discussions about Afghanistan. The nimbleness of one agency versus another, given authorities given to them by Congress. Well, during your time, both of your time in Afghanistan, the US was preparing to surge its military and civilian presence. It then moved to draw down and withdraw people. Development is a long term business. Yet you had to adapt to these changes in directions coming from the President. How was this managed?

Bambi Arellano: [00:22:32] My experience in Iraq, which had hoped to not have ever again, basically repeated itself in Afghanistan. So why don't I talk a little bit about the Iraq experience and maybe give an entry to the Afghanistan and then Ken can talk about, you know, he was there beyond the time I was there. I arrived during the surge. A lot of time was spent preparing for the surge. There were teams established, a green team and a red team. The green team tended more toward the non-military side, whereas the red team was more the military side. Most of the projects went out at least five years because they were major institution building projects and infrastructure projects on the civilian side. Less than two years after the surge had begun, we were surging. Before the 2008 election, the Iraq war had become very unpopular. The gradual drawdown had already started by the time I left. So in other words, the negotiations we had done in most cases, the civilian side was the face of civilian development. Although we would have military accompanying us. But often we were the voice explaining why these sudden changes had occurred. It was very, very difficult for the Iraqis to understand why this was happening so suddenly. We saw the impact of that in the subsequent years in Iraq. Afghanistan, when I arrived was very, very similar. There had been a planning process that laid out projects, most of them between 5 and 10 years. Shortly after I arrived in 2012, we received word that the military drawdown was also going to take place, which meant that a civilian drawdown would have to take place as well, because we were protected by the NATO military troops that were there. Can I think you can explain a little bit about what that next year was like as the reduction took place?

Ken Yamashita: [00:24:35] Well, starting with the year before, you heard Bambi say that when she arrived in 2012, the surging was starting to kick in. I arrived the year earlier in 2011. And what I remember about my conversations with the senior officers in Washington, both at state and AID as I was going out was my number one task was to surge up. And it was a late May and my task was to go from something like 250 American officers to almost 400 American officers by the end of September. These AID officers were embedded with the military field commands and sometimes even in forward operating units, one at a time, not always connected to the programs in Kabul, at the capital, if you will. So that, in fact, going back to examples such as the road and irrigation, when the field commander arrives in a village, talks to the village elder, decides that an irrigation ditch needs to be rehabilitated or it needs to be built all over again. And the person says, Well, that's a good development project, we should do that. So the military commander says, okay, you've got it. So the person calls Kabul and says, Here's what I need. And people in Kabul say, Who are you? Because the surge was so fast and the turnover, remember, this is a one year tour. So we were turning over 85% of the staff every year. And that was by the fall of 2011. By the summer of 2012, when Bambi arrived, the surge was already starting.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:26:13] How did you manage to keep up momentum, morale again in the midst of conflict?

Bambi Arellano: [00:26:21] Here I'm talking about both war experiences. Think people who signed on to go to these countries at the time we were there knew that they were going into situations of extreme uncertainty. I think it took a lot of individual one on one often, but also a lot of very hands on management and working with our staff about the. The risks involved, almost scripting them as they were going out to meet with the Afghans or going out to meet with the Iraqis to explain what was the US position, why things were changing. Very often it was very hard for people to understand these very, very quick alterations which might have been driven more by politics than policy. But what can you do? I mean, this is the nature of government assistance. I found that the managerial challenges for you as a leader in a situation like this really required much more engagement. And it also really required staying very, very much on top of things. General Petraeus was commander in Iraq when I was there. General Odierno was in charge of Baghdad. And General Allen, who had worked with in Iraq in Anbar Province, then was in NATO in Afghanistan when I got there, just really staying in touch and making sure you had the latest information. So you were not giving staff too much information about how things might turn out fine when indeed it looked like things were changing dramatically.

Ken Yamashita: [00:27:56] I had a conversation with one of our officers who works in the health field. She was sharing with me that in her other assignments around the world, not in conflict, that one of the signs of success and frankly, also of personal reward is her ability to have a conversation with mothers who are late in the pregnancy and they're getting the care that they need. They're getting the care because of an aid program. When all of that is taken away, which is what was happening in Afghanistan, we could not leave the compound. So we cannot get this personal confirmation that what we were doing was making a difference and that it frankly made us feel good. And so her comment to me was, I'm not sure that I signed up for this. And I think that we did many, many things to continue it and to keep the morale high. But at the end of the day, there is no question that it created a toll on staff morale.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:28:57] Well, the funding we provided Afghanistan over the years was massive. And the money flowed to a country which, as you mentioned, had a low level of development, weak institutions, but also very high level of corruption. And I want to mention for our listeners here that Afghanistan is also a major drug producer. There were many reviews and there are ongoing reviews of the funding, many inspections, including by the inspector general for Afghan reconstruction. What did you do in your leadership roles to help best ensure the stewardship of these funds? You've mentioned some of the strictures under which it has to operate, but with all these people peering over your shoulder, I'm sure that there were mechanisms or other things that you had to institute to make sure that you could respond to all of these people and account for the money.

Ken Yamashita: [00:29:48] I think one of the things that we did was, in fact exactly that, what we called remote monitoring, that we could not be on the ground to see with our eyes and listen with our ears to people saying, yes, it's making a difference. We have always felt that it's necessary, but not sufficient to hear the voices of the government officials when they say to us, Trust us, your program is working. And we say the coin, an often used phrase, trust but verify. And for us, that verification has always been walking with the farmer or with the teacher or with the pregnant mother and saying, are things better? Have they improved? The fact that we were not able to do that was a big, big hit. And so we came up with a variety of different ways of trying to get that measure, including working with third parties, civil society organizations who were able to get out and get firsthand visual confirmation that things were working. The other thing that I think I might add is that Afghanistan was definitely massive in terms of the budget. On the one hand, it's not the if not close to the largest program that we had at the time. On the other hand, in the cumulative ten year budget of aid, we had done a little back of the envelope calculation that cumulative total funding for over ten years roughly equaled ten weeks of spending by the US military.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:31:18] That's something we've noted in other podcasts that the military budget totally dwarfs the budget of the civilian agencies.

Bambi Arellano: [00:31:25] What you had in both Iraq and Afghanistan were constant audits, constant audits by your own auditors, constant audits by your own projects, and then an external audit agency that was established by Congress SIGIR in Iraq, the Special Inspector General for Iraq, and SIGAR in Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan. The Special Inspector General's had a very, very different mandate and they were very different to work with. The Inspector General in Iraq tended to work, you know, under the guidance of the Ambassador. There was agreement that these audits would be discussed based on the real possibilities of working in the community and getting things done in Afghanistan. I don't know, Ken, what you have to say, but during the time I was there, there was a relatively contentious relationship. Some of the audits had become heavily political and it was just a very uncomfortable situation. When you were used to dealing with auditors that had been willing to look at the way you try to explain to an IRS auditor why things happened in a certain way. Again, a very different situation.

Ken Yamashita: [00:32:43] The interesting thing about a special IG is that it was in Afghanistan, for example. It was it was all of Afghan reconstruction. So at least in terms of its scope, it could cover all the different agencies. So its report could say, for example, support to police is limited in these areas and all of the agencies involved would support the police must do the following. Unfortunately, the IG for Afghanistan chose not to do that, but instead chose to divide and conquer, if you will, But picking out different agencies that it decided it really needed to pick out and was one of them. And so he just kept picking on. Now, the IG in Afghanistan was limited in its ability to do the work just as we were. So the IG might say USAID doesn't even know how many schools were built. And we say, based on what are you making this conclusion? They would not come back to us until the very last minute. And when they did, it was based on Google Maps because they could not do any kind of ground truthing. So they would say on Google Maps, it says the school should be over here. We don't see any school on Google Maps. Therefore there is no school. And we would say, no, the coordinates are wrong. Actually, it should be over there, and there it is. But by then the report is out. The media has it. The papers have it. That's the headline news, AID doesn't know what it's doing in that school.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:34:17] So these reports came out publicly. Before you go through the recommendations of a normal inspection, there's discussion. So there's pretty much agreement in normal inspections of what's going to come out in the report. You may have had disagreements, but you've come up with a solution to whatever they criticized you for as an agency. But in this case, it appears they came out before everything was resolved.

Ken Yamashita: [00:34:40] Yes, two things happened. One, the IG decided that they would come up with a new product, which was a headline piece which was not covered by the terms of the IG. Therefore, he decided that it did not need to meet the conditions of the IG. He would send it to the press on hold basis. In other words, suspended, you know, here it is. You cannot publish this until tomorrow morning. And then he would come to us and say, okay, you have 24 hours to respond to this, but 24 hours. Our first question is, well, we have questions that we need to know before we can respond fully, Such as how did you get the information about schools? Well, they will get back to us in our number 22, and suddenly we have two hours left and then it hits the press. And the press already has the press release because they were sent it in anticipation.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:35:33] And then it's tough to push back. Overall, in your assessment, what did USAID accomplish via its assistance programs in Afghanistan? I know that much has been written and said about the educational side the attainment of education for many, especially girls. But there's much, much more, such as in the energy sector, the telecom sector and others.

Ken Yamashita: [00:35:57] Perhaps the first thing we accomplished was to dig Afghanistan out of a hole. If you visualize a bus that has gone off the cliff, that is what happened in the 1015 years prior to IEDs return with IEDs return in 2002. The first thing we need to do was bring the bus back up to the road. Then what we had to do was fix the bus, replace the tires, fix the engine, etcetera, make sure nobody was terribly injured and so on. Then they get the bus going. When we say what we accomplished was to make things right, it's not much of an accomplishment. But in spite of that, we were able to, in addition to education, I think one of the big things that we were able to do was the help for access for women under Taliban, in particular, the. Had decided that they would say the women obviously have access to health care, but only a male doctor. So female doctors cannot practice by themselves. There must be a male doctor present. And women, of course, will be seen, but they cannot leave their house without a male. So you add those things together and in fact, the access to health care was exceptionally difficult. So we had women dying, childbirth, complicated pregnancies and so on. What did with the other international donors is to fix that, to change it, to open it. And that was a major, major accomplishment. I think the other thing that is often overlooked is what we did in energy. It's often said that when you have stable energy, you have stable communities. There really was no national electrical grid when we arrived over the years. What we were able to do was connect all of Afghanistan under one grid.

Bambi Arellano: [00:37:44] One of the things that impressed me when I first arrived was having conversations with business women and the number of them, and very often as well as their husbands, who at the time of 911 had never set foot in school. I met a woman who had five children at the time of nine divided by 11, barely left her house. She was from Kandahar by the time I met her. She had finished primary school in two years, finished middle school in one year, finished secondary in another year, had gotten her university degree and also a graduate degree and had started her own business. And you would meet countless people like them who would tell you these stories that just left you frankly gobsmacked as to the potential of human beings, the resilience of human beings who have been through these very difficult situations, see an opportunity on the other side and take it.

Ken Yamashita: [00:38:45] Like everything else. The justice sector in Afghanistan was severely, severely damaged. Really, it was some exceptional work by our Department of Justice to train judges, to train prosecutors, improving the quality of law schools in Afghanistan. It was a very, very impressive. And you had Afghan youth who were so impressive on all matters of international law, of humanitarian law, understanding what Geneva was all about and The Hague and so on. Very impressive.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:39:16] Well, to wrap up, I want to ask you a question about future generations. Bambi, you came back to Washington to be the senior development adviser at the Foreign Service Institute, which is the university where our diplomats are trained. And Ken, you do executive coaching and coaching at USAID. How do you each convey your knowledge about the role of development in US national security, the importance of this tool to rising leaders?

Bambi Arellano: [00:39:43] It starts with a discussion of the interagency and the way USAID coordinates with the State Department, the way embassies work under the umbrella of the ambassador's authority, the way all reporting goes through that authority, the fact that the USAID director reports directly to the ambassador in country. The main thing for me is then to make sure that the other agencies understand the fact that we are doing this. So what I would find at the Foreign Service Institute, I was constantly speaking to panels that had other agencies, ambassadors, deputy chiefs of mission about the role of USAID and how it fit into the work that the US government does in supporting national security and national interests abroad. Finally, I think we have become much more sensitive to and better at advising new staff on the kinds of risks that are inherent in the countries we may work in and their careers may take them to places that they never expected to go.

Ken Yamashita: [00:40:53] The term development itself is a last century term. There is hardly a community, no matter how remote in the world, that does not have some kind of connectivity. That's a very different way of thinking about our assistance programs. And so when we talk about development, it's just a very different set of variables.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:41:17] Well, I think we need to come up with a new word. I don't know what it's going to be. Cooperation. Cooperation rather than development. Well, Bambi and Ken, I want to thank you about sharing your knowledge, sharing your understanding and underlying precisely the importance of cooperation in terms of how the US operates overseas, seeks to support more stable countries, and how this is very important to our own national security.

Ken Yamashita: [00:41:45] Maybe it could just end with a quick anecdote to your listeners. The next time you go to a Safeway or Giant or any local supermarket, especially in the winter months and you buy fresh asparagus, that asparagus says that it comes from Peru. Then that fresh asparagus from Peru started out as an AID project. Likewise, if you go to the coffee aisle and you buy coffee from Colombia that says 100% Colombian coffee, that says that it's shade grown, that it's a unique and special coffee that is something that AID championed in Colombia.

Deborah McCarthy: [00:42:24] I think you should be in advertisements, Ken. Well, thank you both. Thank you very much. This has been great. I've certainly learned a lot. And I think it's going to be a very valuable addition to the series. Excellent. Thanks. This has been a new episode in the series, The General and the Ambassador. Thank you for listening. The series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy with the generous support of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. You can find our podcasts on all major podcast sites. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook as well as visit our website. GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.org. We very much welcome input and suggestions in this series. You can contact us at General.Ambassador.podcast@gmail.com.