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Contributions from
the Column
Studies and reports
Afghanistan: coupling security and reconstruction?
“US NGOs are having a hard time with the present government”
Crisis prevention in Africa – promising progress
Cooperation – The path to successful peace work
Scant progress so far in the fight against bribery
12/2003 |
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[ Interministerial conference on the Kunduz mission ]
Afghanistan: coupling security and reconstruction?
The situation in large parts of Afghanistan is marked by a dangerous mix of civil war economy (especially drugs), warlord fiefdoms and lack of statehood. This is also true of Kunduz, where the German Reconstruction Team of soldiers and civil aid workers embarked on its mission at the end of October. How a civil and military joint venture needs to be designed to succeed under such conditions was a question discussed by representatives of various federal ministries, the Bundeswehr (German armed forces) and researchers at a conference staged on November 4 in Berlin by the Federal Academy for Security Policy Studies (BAKS). Most participants favoured seeing the warlords as not just part of the problem but also a possible solution to the problem of security in Afghanistan. Only if warlords are given the prospect of a non-military role in Afghan affairs, delegates were told, can local fiefdoms in Afghanistan be broken up.
This perception is fundamental to the concept of the Kunduz Reconstruction Team. The team is not designed to be a military counterweight to the warlords – a fact which prompted criticism from some conference participants: the German Reconstruction Team is unable to change the pre-vailing structures, they said; it can only stand by and watch opium crops being grown and warlords doing as they please. Representatives of the federal government, however, said the main idea was to let the warlords know they were under close observation; apart from staging a presence to improve security for the Afghan people, the German soldiers’ primary purpose was to gather information about the security situation and pass it on to the civil actors working in Kunduz.
One important – civil – objective of the Reconstruction Team’s work is to make developmental progress visible as swiftly as possible. The federal government speaks of creating “beacons” for the dual task of promoting Afghan acceptance of the military presence (“hearts and minds” projects) and showing Germans back home the point of the mission – a highly controversial strategy, as was evident in Berlin. For one thing, the military contingent and development organisations need to confer and cooperate with one another, something which non-governmental organisations in particular shrink from doing. Federal government representatives again stressed that the military presence is only one element of German engagement and that, unlike the US-led Provincial Reconstruction Teams, the German military task force is not there to direct civil reconstruction operations. On the contrary, the Bundeswehr defines itself as a service-provider for the civil groups, which are focused on pacifying and rebuilding the country.
Another problem is that military and development actors are looking at totally different time-frames. In Berlin, various participants were sceptical that “beacons” would be enough for sustainable and participative development cooperation. Where projects aimed at delivering visible results fast, they said, it was doubtful that they would actually benefit the people in need and not a warlord or drug baron.
The Berlin conference was designed mainly to promote a better understanding between civil and military actors and was welcomed by some participants because they felt the federal government had failed to ensure full planning, control and coordination in key areas. Unfortunately, not many representatives of non-governmental organisations were invited; with a stronger NGO presence, the discussions might have taken a different direction – although they might also have gone beyond the scope of this informal round of talks.
Conrad Schetter
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