WASHINGTON-The Clinton administration’s trade ban against the Taliban in Afghanistan is preventing a New Jersey firm from completing construction of a wireless system in that country, a policy seen by some as ill-conceived and ineffective insofar as rooting out terrorism and introducing progressive reforms.
Telephone Systems International, of Mount Olive, N.J., last year beat out a slew of telecom titans for a $240 million contract to build a wireless network in Afghanistan, a war-torn country sorely in need of modern infrastructure.
The deal represents the first major investment by the West in Afghanistan since it was invaded by the Soviet Union in the late 1970s.
As envisioned, the wireless network would be rolled out in stages to put phones in the hands of between 1 million to 3 million citizens in major cities like Kabul and Kandahar within two years. Later, another 16 Afghan towns would get wireless connections.
The system combines wireless local loop and mobile telephony using European-based Global System for Mobile communications technology.
In the interim, TSI is using satellite links to hook up Afghans with each other and the world.
The administration imposed the trade ban July 5 because it believes the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist militia that controls Afghanistan, is providing safe refuge to Osama bin Laden.
Laden is suspected by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials of masterminding the August 1998 bombing of American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in which 224 people were killed.
The administration’s trade ban has thrown a wrench into the buildout of the Afghan wireless system, but it has not completely halted it.
“Everything went into limbo,” said Gary Breshinsky, a major investor-along with U.S.-Afghan citizen Ehsan Bayat-in the wireless network. “We’re caught up in a Catch 22.”
Breshinsky and Bayat share ownership in the Afghan wireless system with the Taliban. Breshinsky said he has been a cellular agent for Bell Atlantic Mobile in New Jersey since the 1980s.
“There is really no phone system” in Afghanistan, said Breshinsky.
Breshinsky said trade restrictions prevent him from directly participating in the development of the Afghan wireless system. However, he said subcontractors abroad can do some work on the network.
Still, Breshinsky said the ban has chilled prospects for vendor financing and said delays are taking a financial and personal toll on him and his family.
Despite the snag and his disagreement with the ban, Breshinsky has not given up and hopes the State Department and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control will grant him a waiver to resume work on the wireless project in Afghanistan. “This thing is very political,” he said.
A State Department spokesman declined to discuss the TSI matter. Clinton has received growing criticism in recent years about using trade sanctions as a bargaining tool in foreign policy.
Slapping trade sanctions on Afghanistan that slows a wireless project and denies the country modernization is not the way to get Afghanistan back on track, according to the Afghanistan Foundation here.
The organization is chaired by former House Commerce Committee member Don Ritter (R-Pa.), one of the earlier congressional advocates of spectrum auctions.
“Because the United States commits few resources to Afghanistan and the region in general, it is not able to act to protect its interests,” stated a new white paper the Afghanistan Foundation sent members of Congress.
“U.S. policy toward Afghanistan,” the paper added, “should follow two parallel and complementary tracks, once of which begins a much tougher policy toward the Taliban while the other spells out the conditions under which the United States would work with the Taliban.”
For now, all Breshinsky can do is sit tight and hope the United States will cut his firm some slack.
“This has shaken our faith in everything,” said Breshinsky, who speaks 10 languages and is working with a relief organization to bring humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. “I will not give up on them.”
