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Ryan Crocker was US ambassador to Pakistan from 2004 to 2007. He also was appointed interim ambassador to Afghanistan in 2002. And of course, he served as ambassador to Iraq, from 2007, before leaving that post earlier this year. Marco Werman talks with him about the challenges for the US in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Download MP3

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MARCO WERMAN: Ryan Crocker served as the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan and also to Iraq, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon.  After 37 years in the Foreign Service, Crocker retired in February.  He says based on his experience in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, Washington needs to make a long-term commitment to the region.

RYAN CROCKER: I think we’re going to have to be very flexible and very agile in dealing with the challenges in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.  They were years in the making.  They’ll be years in the solution.  And I think the right focus is going to be somewhere in between a narrow or too narrow kind of terrorism strategy and nation building in a western model. I heard one Afghan specialist talk about good enough governments in Afghanistan as a goal.  It may never look like a western democracy, but I think Afghanistan can aspire to a level of governance that will bring general stability to the country. Therefore, protecting core Afghan and western interests.

WERMAN: What about winning hearts and minds there?  I mean, we saw how difficult it was in Iraq and you certainly saw that up close having been the Ambassador there.  I mean, Iraq had an existing infrastructure, greater potential, you could argue, for some limited democratic change.  Afghanistan on the other hand has been described as almost medieval and doesn’t seem to have the same foundation to put in those building blocks of democracy.  I mean, are we in a sense maybe wasting our time trying to win people over in Afghanistan?

CROCKER: I think it’s never a waste of time. Any counterinsurgency anywhere in the world has to rely on the population, securing the population, supporting the population.  Clearly in Afghanistan it’s going to be a different challenge than in Iraq for the reasons you mentioned.  The institutions simply are not there and the infrastructure is not there.   But other institutions are.  We’ve seen from the beginning in Afghanistan a reliance on the Jirga system.  So institutions are there.  They may be more informal, more unique to Afghanistan.  We need to understand them and we need to listen to the Afghans as to what will work.  There is a long history of violence and militancy in Afghanistan, which we would ignore or very grave peril.

WERMAN: But if we don’t ignore it, I mean is it an easy enough kind of sell to the American public to say we’ve had this long rocky military history of conflicts and we should be there for it?

CROCKER: Well, it’s important to do, I think, two things here in America.  First is to outline a positive strategy.  This is what the Administration is deliberating right now, what our goals are, what the means are that will be necessary to achieve those goals, what the costs will be.  And then to do a second thing, which is to talk frankly about the alternatives.  We walked out of Afghanistan once after the Soviet withdrawal at the end of the 1980s, and I think the fact that we left Afghanistan to its own devices charted the road to 9/11.  So we’ve seen that movie before.  I don’t think we want to repeat it.  But again, I think the administration has to lay out both the positive way ahead and then talk frankly about the alternatives which I see as not very good.

WERMAN: Do you support an uptake of U.S. troops to Afghanistan even to the maximum level of 60,000 which is the number that is being kicked around right now?

CROCKER: We have this saying in the military that troops to task.  That means you’ve got to lay out the task.  What is it that you want to achieve and then you talk about the resources, troop numbers and other resources?  So the first thing the Administration has to do is be very clear about what the task or tasks are, and then talk about the resources including troops that will be necessary to achieve them.

WERMAN: I wonder if you ever have a kind of a looking glass feeling that you are seeing events on the ground in Afghanistan, in Iraq and the region, and then you come home to this political debate on various other topics that don’t always mirror the realities?

CROCKER: Well, again, I’ve spent my career largely overseas and largely in the broader Middle East.  Most recently, of course, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan.  I am actually happy to come home to what is truly a great nation that has a lot of different interests; the health care debate of course occupies us all.  At the same time, I do encourage my fellow citizens not to lose track of the challenges overseas, not to decide we don’t want to do it any more, it’s costing too much because these things have long histories and these histories have a way of circling back and biting us hard if we lose our focus.

WERMAN: You’re retired now from the Foreign Service, correct?

CROCKER: I am.

WERMAN: Right, at the ripe old age of 59?

CROCKER: Now 60, I’m afraid.

WERMAN: Still not a bad age to be retired at.  You’ve gone back to Spokane, Washington and I read that when you got back there, you and your wife had plans to build on 13 acres.  So while the house is being built meantime you’ve found another place to live on Craig’s List, the same three-bedroom house you grew up in as a kid.

CROCKER: It’s a great story.  That is exactly right.  When we got to Spokane in April looking for a place to rent while the house was built, I found my mother’s old house that she had sold in 2005 available, and we moved right back in.  That was the house I was born into 60 years ago.

WERMAN: And it’s kind of interesting because at the age of 60 I mean you’ve been around the globe, had an extraordinary diplomatic career that put you in the historic hot spots, Baghdad twice, Islamabad, Kabul, Beirut where you almost died in the 1983 bombing.  How does it feel to let go of the reigns of this pivotal moment, and now you’re literally back where you started as a kid?

CROCKER: Actually, Marco, it is a great feeling.  I am proud to have been a part of what I call the Long War.  It will be a very long war. I had no intention ever of trying to see it through because unlike the great campaigns of World War I or World War II, we have no idea where this is going to end.  I think I picked a good time to leave the field and I leave it to very, very able men and women whom I have enormous confidence in as this fight goes forward.

WERMAN: Ambassador Ryan Crocker, thank you very much for your time.

CROCKER: Thank you.

WERMAN: Ryan Crocker served as a U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan from 2004 to 2007.

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