Report from Afghanistan

Senator Bill Frist
01/12/2005

Afghanistan is a huge success story that Americans and the world are missing -- or at least not giving the attention it deserves. Help me change that by learning what astounding progress has been made here and then sharing it with your children and neighbors and church members and coworkers. Indeed, I’m in the middle of all the information and decision-making you can imagine and yet, even I am blown away by what America, our leadership, and the American taxpayer have accomplished here in Afghanistan since 2001. And your family and children and their children will be much, much safer because of it. The benefit is to us -- and all mankind.

This very minute I’m on a C-130, now flying high above Afghanistan, and later tonight literally around Iran. I will spend the next 5 hours in the monstrous hold of that workhorse of a plane, benefiting quite directly from the commitment and service of our National Guard men and women (tonight from Rhode Island and Mississippi, this morning on the trip over, from Alaska) who carry us in and out of places like Afghanistan, and last week Iraq. They sacrifice a lot. I’ve talked to the crew members a lot over the past week as we have spent so much time flying together; they are working hard for you and me. They all have regular jobs they have been pulled way from, of course, but now they are being called again and again and again to go on more and more tours of duty, drawn away from their families. We are pushing them, they are delivering, but we need to make sure that we fulfill our commitments to them and their families and not ask them to do too much. An issue for a later day. But I appreciate them.

Afghanistan is a country nearly the size of Texas, populated by over 28 million from a variety of ethnic and religious groups.

President Hamid Karzai a couple of hours ago recounted to us the story of his journey last week to the south of the country and his appearance at a community meeting. He is proud of the progress he has made in emphasizing the rights of women and encouraging their participation in government. Before 2001, under the Taliban, they were subjected to treatment as objects -- and torture. He said that, in the town meeting, after introducing himself to all the men in the room by name, a woman came up to him and point blank asked him why he did not know the names of the women in the room since he had known the names of each of the men. Her point, he said somewhat humbly and self-deprecatingly, was that Afghan women today feel comfortable enough even to criticize their president to his face! How far he said proudly his country had come in a brief three years! 

And in our press conference later in the day, I observed that he made a point to recognize in particular the women reporters present so they could ask their questions. 

He is amazing -- a charismatic leader, about 50 years old, who has taken charge, risked his life, and earned the respect of his people. He leads boldly. His successful election by the Afghan people late last year was a final death knell for the Taliban and terrorists in Afghanistan. (The Taliban movement was formed in 1993-94 by Afghan Islamic clerics and students, who were mostly ultra orthodox Sunni Muslims who practiced a form of Islam called “wahhabism.”) 

Prior to the recent election, no one predicted 10 million Afghans would register to vote, no one.

Bill Frist

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