The first issue is there is more military than we can count in Afghanistan, between the U.S. coalition, ISAF-NATO, private security, drug trafficking and their soldiering activities, warlord activities. That's why I'm saying there's a brutalization of the society that has already gone on for 27 years. So gender relations are affected by that.
In that sense, there is no coordination that we can see--true coordination--between those armies on the ground and the different objectives those different armies have. That is crucial--coordination of the international community on the security issues on the ground is paramount. Afghans do not know to whom they address themselves. One uniform against the other is not automatically something that they can grasp--who's doing what on the ground. And that does affect the security of people on the ground. In my view, this is paramount.
So, yes, the decline of security...the rule of power versus the rule of state makes it so that indeed there is a decline; you see that the rule of law has difficulty seeing the light of day in Afghanistan. So the need for security, for social measures.... Yes, indeed, we have seen--I have seen in my travels--farmers who are Taliban at night, for simple security issues, but also for employment. There is no employment.
So that's another issue that needs to be addressed--and yes, the meshing of development with security is paramount.
When you're talking about the department of vice and virtue, the way I'm looking at it is that right now they are in the business of staying quiet. There are a lot of watchdogs around the vice and virtue department right now.
I worry more about the fact that Karzai needs to set up vice and virtue to calm some of the extremists. Because there are so many other issues that need to be addressed, I presume that Karzai has decided to do that to calm X, Y, or Z. Yet it is an indication, and it's not an indication that one should take lightly.
But I think the most important things in terms of women's rights and security are that Afghans need clarification and there needs to be coordination. There is no coordination in development in this country and there is no coordination among the different goals and mandates of the different militaries.