Afghan president charters school at University event

Afghanistan Interim Government President Hamid Karzai advocated continued cooperation between Afghanistan and the international community in a speech addressed to the University community Friday, citing extremism and terrorism as common enemies of both Afghanistan and the United States.

"Of our experience in Afghanistan the past two years, I have come face to face with the cooperation of civilizations," Karzai said in Richardson Auditorium. "For me it is a surety that people in the world are threatened by the same thing. If we go and help, they will receive that help, and for a common objective people will join hands just as Afghanistan has joined hands with the rest of the world to fight terrorism."

Karzai — a powerful Pashtun tribal leader and force against the Taliban in Afghanistan — took charge of the country's interim government in December 2001 and was endorsed as head of state by Afghanistan's grand council this past June.

He came to campus last week at the invitation of Students Providing Aid, Relief and Kind Services International — a worldwide service organization that began in Canada and spread to the University about four years ago. SPARKS is establishing a school in Kabul with the cooperation of the Afghan government that will open in November to 40 kindergarteners. The school will eventually expand to 1,500 students.

"President Karzai is the quintessential leader of one of the two critical hotspots in the world we live in now," said Wolfgang Danspeckgru-ber, director of the University's Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination and one of the event organizers. "He is a symbolic figure of the struggle in Afghanistan, and his visit is an expression that he really wanted to connect with this university."

During his address, Karzai focused on the ideals of peace and democracy shared by Afghan and American citizens and emphasized that cultural differences, particularly religious ones, are not barriers to further cooperation between the two countries and with the rest of the world.

"Many people associate Islam with terrorism, but that is absolutely wrong," Karzai said. "Those in Afghanistan who help me and help themselves are deeply Islamic believers. We drove out those who used our religion to justify murder and destruction. What they did was violence against our religion and against yours here, violence against our country and against yours here."

Terrorism relates to no value system, Karzai said, calling Islam a religion that teaches "compassion, tolerance, and most importantly, the rule of law."

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Despite the elimination of the Taliban from much of the country and improved social conditions for women, Afghanistan remains a country with serious security and development issues.

Armed gangs and warlords who depend upon drug trafficking for financial backing are dominant throughout much of the country, and the recent arrival of extremist groups from other countries has further underscored the need to continue fighting terrorism in Afghanistan, Karzai said.

"[Karzai] implicitly said that while one side of our society is trying to help [Afghanistan], the other side, the drug-consuming side, is destroying Afghanistan," Danspeckgruber said. "Many of us who work on Afghanistan consider narcotics and the illegal activities around it to be the singular biggest threat to the security and future of Afghanistan and thus the national security of the United States."

Despite these continued problems, Afghanistan is working toward full democracy, and the country's first democratic elections are scheduled for June 2004.

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"Islam speaks for a just society, and how can you have justice if you don't have people voting and choosing their system of government?" Karzai said. "We may have a different value system than the United States, but that doesn't contradict the basic right of mankind to be able to determine his or her future in terms of government and the like."

Karzai's visit was a largely student-organized event that grew out of internships held by University students in Afghanistan this summer.

The students, members of SPARKS, set the groundwork for the new school and arranged to receive Karzai at the University after his visit to the United Nations last week.

"Princeton's mission really came to the fore here," Danspeckgruber said. "This was a heyday for Princeton and a heyday primarily because of the young leaders on campus, and I'm sure [Karzai] took this with him."

The lecture was well attended, with all 600 tickets available to the University community distributed before the event. Karzai received a warm reception from the audience, entering and exiting Richardson Auditorium to standing ovations.

"One of the privileges of being a member of the University community is the ability to hear world leaders talk about important issues, and this event was clearly no exception to that," said Ashirul Amin, one of the co-chairs of SPARKS. "I think this event reminds us that much still needs to be done towards the reconstruction effort, and that we, as students, can also make a difference."