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Safdar Sial
Much has changed in Afghanistan since 2001 but a stable, peaceful and functional Afghanistan is not yet in sight. Some recent reports on Afghanistan suggest that the international community's involvement in Afghanistan has been marked by inefficiency and a fragmented approach to development and reconstruction; the emphasis was on pursuing al-Qaeda and Taliban and not on stabilization of the country. Tensions have grown within the international community as it attempts to stabilize Afghanistan and little coordination exists among the many disparate international organizations and agencies active in the war-ravaged country. The revived Taliban insurgency and concerns over spiralling corruption and Afghanistan's burgeoning drugs economy, which could be worth as much as £4 billion, have caused recrimination. There is, nonetheless, a growing lack of confidence on the part of the Afghan people about the future direction of their country.
Daan Everts, who concluded his term as NATO’s civilian representative in Afghanistan on December 31, 2007, revealed in his interview with al-Jazeera TV that a fractured and fragmented approach, adopted by the US and NATO countries in Afghanistan, not only created inequality but also balkanized the country: “This [fragmentation] has also resulted in a very incremental approach to the whole of Afghanistan and basically partitioning Afghanistan into lots. So you have a little "German Afghanistan" in the North, an "Italian Afghanistan" in the west, "Dutch Afghanistan" in Uruzgan and a "Canadian Afghanistan" in Kandahar and so on. Geographically we have been fractured, but also sectorally with equal ineffectiveness - like giving the justice sector totally to the Italians, counter narcotics to the British, the police to Germans, anti-terrorism to Americans - very fractured and that's why we have the problems with the police and the justice sector - its only now, six years later, that it's being forcefully addressed”.
The people of Afghanistan own nothing of their fractured state. The ‘representative’ government at Kabul is very weak and has yet been unable to earn trust of the people who are an indigenous key to a stable and peaceful Afghanistan. Ultimately they have to live there for ever and run their country after the US and NATO forces, sooner or later, leave for their home towns. With very little emphasis on nation building and development and more on al-Qaeda and Taliban hunt, Afghanistan is feared to remain a constant epicenter of conflicts and terrorist movements. According to the Atlantic Council of the United States report, NATO and Afghan forces cannot be beaten by the insurgency or by the Taliban. Neither can they eliminate the Taliban by military means. Hence, the future of Afghanistan will be determined by progress or failure in the civil sector.
The Afghanistan Study Group report, released on January 30, 2008, also alludes to faltering mission to stabilize Afghanistan. It says, “The long road to reconstruction, reconciliation, and institutional development has grown hazardous. Despite a significant increase in the number of foreign troops and the amount of aid to Afghanistan since 2002, violence, insecurity, and opium production have risen dramatically as Afghan confidence in their government and its international partners falls. The year 2007 has been the deadliest for American and international troops in Afghanistan since U.S.-led coalition forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001. As we struggle to build an Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police, suicide attacks against Afghan security forces have also surged. The Taliban launched over 140 suicide bombings in 2007, with numerous attacks in the heart of the capital, Kabul. Over 80 Afghan civilians reportedly lost their lives in suicide attacks in September 2007 alone.”
Although international support for the mission in Afghanistan remains broad, some nations believe the mission is failing and that is leading to an inconsistent and poor coordination, and lack of common strategic vision. Several NATO countries are wavering in their troop commitments. Britain, Denmark, and Poland have dispatched greater numbers of troops this year, and Canada, Australia and the Netherlands continue to participate in the heaviest fighting in the south. At the same time, strong public opposition to the Afghan war has grown in Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany, among others, threatening to fray the coalition in the next two years. This is good neither for Afghanistan nor for NATO itself.
Nonetheless, the Taliban’s guerilla tactics have slowed work on reconstruction and humanitarian projects. The coalition has proved it can clear areas held by the Taliban, but often sees these areas fall back to Taliban influence as soon as the coalition forces depart. From this one can easily predict the security scenario after the U.S. and its NATO partners leave the country permanently. NATO and OEF (the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom) forces have diversified missions in Afghanistan. NATO’s ISAF’s key military tasks include assisting the Afghan government in extending its authority across the country; conducting stability and security operations in co-ordination with the Afghan national security forces; mentoring and supporting the Afghan National Army (ANA); and supporting Afghan government programs to disarm illegally armed groups. The OEF mission in Afghanistan is to conduct counter-insurgency (COIN) operations against the Taliban and other insurgents, and to stop the infiltration of Taliban forces from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
Will the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) be able to manage and sustain all these missions after the coalition partners leave the country? This requires not only a lengthy, improved and coordinated commitment from the US and NATO countries but also needs more efforts and resources on training and standing up the ANA and recruiting, training, and providing adequate pay and equipment to the ANP so they can maintain security in an area once coalition forces depart. The ANP are severely under funded, poorly trained and poorly equipped. Many go months without pay because of corruption and problems with the payroll system. In parts of the country the police are seen as a greater cause of insecurity than the Taliban, undermining the authority and legitimacy of the central government. The U.S. pledges to spend over $8 billion in 2007–2008 on equipping and training Afghan security forces, the ANA and ANP, should not be mere pledges. In the meanwhile, U.S. assistance needs to go beyond equipping and training, and be directed towards embedding foreign police officers into Afghan units, possibly by creating a mechanism similar to the NATO-led Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams (OMLT) mechanism for the ANA.
There is nevertheless a broad agreement that building a peaceful and stable Afghanistan is not possible by military means alone. Providing incentives to Taliban that do not subscribe to extremist ideologies and agree to put down their guns and join the political process should be considered. The international coalition partners need to adhere to the same standards when negotiating with insurgents, conveying a consistent message that former insurgents will not be allowed to impose an extremist agenda on the Afghan people and will instead participate in the building of a tolerant, pluralistic and representative society.
To assist provincial and local governments to govern more effectively and deliver essential services, there are 25 Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan operating under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) but within PRTs there is no unified chain of command and a fragmented approach exists there as well. There is no rationale for distributing resources among provinces on the basis of the size of the economy of the PRT lead nation. Moreover the resources being put into this country are less than in other areas, for example Kosovo. The coupling of Iraq and Afghanistan has also shown a vague approach towards Afghanistan. There has been, nonetheless, an outflow of resources from Afghans. This is very depressing to see - and it makes [Afghans] cynical. Because of this, probably, 40 per cent of Afghanistan aid is flowing out. So there is this ‘aid industry’ that descends on a poor nation and runs away with part of the loot, to put it bluntly and with some exaggeration. Of course, there are many bona fide actors, including NGOs. Three-fourths of the aid is being spent through the external budget, so the Afghan government can hardly be blamed. It's a bit of the chicken and egg [situation]. The foreigners create their own channels outside the central government because it is weak, but they keep the central government weak by not going through it - it's a vicious circle. To be very lucid and simple, of every dollar of aid spent on Afghanistan, less than ten percent goes directly to Afghans, further compounding reform and reconstruction problems.
Six years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan is still facing a fundamental crisis of governance. Creating a capable and legitimate Afghan government is the sine qua non of the intervention in Afghanistan – without it there is no sustainable security; no sustainable development; without which there is no political legitimacy. Yet the state-building mission in Afghanistan has always taken a back seat in U.S. policy to the counter-terrorism mission in terms of funding, manpower, and political attention. As a result, the fundamental objective of building a competent government that can provide security and justice and gain the trust of the Afghan people has lagged.
A central part of the problem, going back to the initial intervention, is the stunning dearth of human capital in a country ravaged by over 20 years of civil war. The pool of educated Afghan professionals available for staffing its civil administrations remains very small in relation to need. On top of that, many senior political figures – provincial governors, members of the cabinet, and parliamentarians – are considered serial human rights abusers by large segments of the population.
This sense of impunity shakes popular confidence in the concepts of democracy and rule of law and makes people question the legitimacy of the government. The out-of-control opium economy has also impacted rule of law and governance in significant ways. Underpaid civil servants are expected to engage in dangerous policing and eradication programs in environments awash in cash for bribes. In the meanwhile Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world. With a per capita gross domestic product of only 377 USD in 2007, most Afghans live on less than a dollar a day, the World Bank measure of absolute poverty. Afghanistan was ranked the second lowest country in the world on the UNDP 2007-08 human development index, and is in the bottom five countries of the world for life expectancy (42.9 years), under-five infant mortality (257 per 1,000 live births), maternal mortality, and adult literacy (28%). Access to clean water and heath services is extremely limited. In short, most Afghans remain desperately poor.
The call for “paradigm shift” is over-used. However, in Afghanistan’s case, one is justified. Unless those parties interested in saving Afghanistan understand that a regional approach is essential, the stalemate will continue. Bringing in interested parties and neighbors could be done through a meeting or conference that could include the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (of which Russia and China are key members); India; Iran; and of course Pakistan. A regional approach will not be fashioned over night. But the international community and the UN High Commissioner must put energy and focus into a regional approach if gains in Afghanistan are to endure.
Then there is need to help sustain the people’s fragile tolerance of an extended international military presence in Afghanistan to put the country on the right track of development. The Afghan history has shown an immense enmity to foreign forces. Two successive British expeditions in the 19th century and the massive Soviet invasion in the late 20th century had provoked virulent responses from the people of Afghanistan—each ending in the bloody demise of the foreign military presence. The US and NATO forces if fail to win hearts and minds of the Afghan people, by avoiding the civilian casualties and winning trust of the people, there will never be extended presence of these forces in Afghanistan possible. And nor will their reconstruction activities be able to build a functional, stable and peaceful Afghanistan. Lt. General David Barno has also recently revealed that their strategy to keep people at the centre of gravity worked well during 2003-2005.
At the end of the day, what is most important to the United States and other strategic players in this region is that success or failure in Afghanistan will dramatically shape the future of a strategically important region for decades to come. Afghanistan’s popular image is that of a backward country but it remains at the center of a global energy and trade crossroads—one which is only growing in significance. It is also situated in an exceptionally important neighborhood: to the east lies Pakistan, the second largest Islamic nation in the world, and likely armed with dozens of nuclear weapons; to the northeast is China, with growing regional energy and security interests; across the north, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, three former states of the Soviet Union, are struggling against internal forces of instability while confronting powerful neighbors; and to the west is Iran, whose looming nuclear program is cause for grave US concern. This neighborhood defines strategic interest for the U.S. and the West—and within it, Afghanistan remains a friendly state anxious to get rid of poverty, backwardness and terrorism and desirous to rise as a peaceful, stable and functional state.
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