The Foreign Service Journal, December 2014

20 DECEMBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Afghanistan is at another turning point. Though the challenges are great, the nation cannot a ord to cycle back into civil war. BY EDMUND MCWI L L I AMS FOCUS Edmund McWilliams, a retired Foreign Service o cer, served as special envoy to Afghanistan from 1988 to 1989. He joined the Foreign Service in 1975 and retired in 2001, having served in Vientiane, Bangkok, Moscow, Kabul, Islamabad, Managua, Jakarta andWashing- ton, D.C. As chargé, he opened embassies in Bishkek and Dushanbe after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Since retirement, he has been volunteer- ing with U.S. and foreign human rights nongovernmental organizations. ON AFGHANISTAN WILL HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF? F or the second time in a quarter-century, Afghanistan is in the midst of a historic transition. As in 1989, when Soviet troops left the country after a decade of occupa- tion, the international community is in the process of ratcheting down its security presence and its foreign assistance levels. is pullback comes as Ashraf Ghani Amadzai, Afghanistan’s new president, and Chief Executive O cer Abdullah Abdullah grapple with the same challenges that confronted Hamid Karzai’s administration. As Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko noted in a Sept. 12 speech at Georgetown University, the country “remains under assault by insurgents and is short of