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12/2006 |
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Intervention illusions
The Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan, and nation-building seems stalled. Five cardinal shortcomings have led to this sobering scenario.
[ By Rolf Paasch ]
In the president’s palace in Kabul, on any day of the week: delegations of turbaned leaders and conservative mullahs from Kandahar or Badakhshan pass tight security controls and enter the spacious reception hall, to meet their head of state. Of course, President Hamid Karzai knows what to expect: complaints about the inaction of his government, the demeanour of the foreign troops, the slow disbursement of promised aid and fast cultural change. Five years after the Taliban were ousted, neither jobs nor security are available outside Kabul, Karzai’s visitors say. And forget about electricity, power supply is erratic even in the capital.
Western politicians and diplomats rarely meet Karzai’s critics from the conservative provinces. The president, however, regularly comforts them with understanding and new promises, agreeing to compromises which are not, strictly speaking, “politically correct”. It’s always been that way. Whether khan, king or now Karzai – Kabul has always ruled by accommodation rather than by projecting a forceful central-state. After all, the radius of its power was always quite limited. Karzai says this is the only way to govern Afghanistan.
In a conference room in Kabul, on the same day: officials from local ministries and multilateral organisations are, once more, discussing the “Interim Afghanistan National Development Strategy”. They share information, raise demands and check benchmarks. They are simply going through the motions, even though they know that their exercise does not make much sense. But they do not have any alternative. If 2010 targets for tax revenue or human rights prove to be illusory already, so what? There will be no change of course. The set of quantified targets will not be allowed to unravel, as that would put at risk the “Afghanistan Compact”, concluded in London in January. The experts say this is the only way to reconstruct the country.
Parallel worlds define Afghan reality. As Rory Stewart argued in the New York Times of 13 July 2006, Karzai’s approach is one of “all politics is local”. That does not fit well with the central-government aspirations spelled out in the Petersberg Accord, nor does “Afghan ownership” agree with western intervention. The ministries’ lack of absorptive capacity clashes with the need of international bureaucracies to disburse funds. Afghan pragmatism collides with international high-mindedness, as do cumbersome local institutions (and their inherent corruption) with hasty decision-making by the donor community (and its inherent corruption).
People argue quite a lot, but there hardly is any constructive debate of these matters. Any serious discourse on the illusions of intervention and the limits of modernisation would have to begin with the self-criticism international aid workers freely express over dinner in expensive Kabul restaurants, but which they hardly mention in project reports and official assessments. It is a proof of the failure of both military and civil reporting systems – not to mention the media – that, five years after the Taliban were toppled, there suddenly is talk of the intervention’s looming failure.
Long before autumn 2006, it had become apparent that some expectations were exaggerated. But one did not want to listen to “pessimists”. Correcting course would have been easier earlier on, however. Today, widespread disappointment is fuelling the insurgency in the south.
Five crucial failures
1. It was irresponsible to believe that Afghanistan – according to UNDP statistics the fifth poorest country in the world – could be transformed into a stable nation by means of a cheap civil-military intervention after 25 years of war and several years of Taliban dictatorship (International Crisis Group, 2006). From the very beginning, the exigencies of the war on terror clashed with those of nation-building.
Instead of filling the security vacuum – with western troops first and Afghan security forces later – “Operation Enduring Freedom” did nothing but hunt down Al Qaeda operatives. The NATO-led ISAF-mission, on the other hand, initially only provided security in the capital city. This “light footprint” approach was also supported by the United Nations (UNAMA) after 2001. It helped the warlords of the civil war re-assume power. After allowing these rulers to infiltrate state institutions, the donor community greeted their forceful opposition to legal-reform plans with bewilderment.
2. The projection of security in the provinces was criminally neglected. Today, more than 3,000 British soldiers are fighting the Taliban, but at the beginning of the year only a few hundred GIs were deployed in the known strongholds of the Islamist hard-liners. The Taliban saw their chance and moved into this security vacuum.
Germany, as a “lead nation” with 40 police advisers in the country, was supposed to make an Afghan police operational in four years. This plan was naive. The same is true of the idea that mentors from the USA could quickly train over 60,000 cops and turn them into dedicated, incorruptible police officers – with only $ 50 pay per person and month. When the Taliban resurfaced in spring, people were shocked to discover that, in key districts, only a few dozen policemen were on duty, and that they had no equipment for communications or transport. Where, however, police officers were actually on patrol, they were often committing rather than preventing crimes. According to NATO officials and journalists, the force is “90% corrupt”. Karzai’s dubious staff decisions compounded the situation. In order to pacify local warlords, he did not sack verifiably corrupt police chiefs, but merely transferred them elsewhere.
Things could be different. Experience shows that matters improve when capable governors cooperate with honest police chiefs, competent UNAMA representatives and committed commanders of local “Provincial Reconstruction Teams” (PRT). Unfortunately, that is the exception. The non-relevance of the state and its corrupt provincial bodies are the main reasons for the Taliban having been able to re-establish themselves as guardians of law and order in the south.
3. So far, there is no convincing concept for civil-military cooperation. It took far too long for the Provincial Reconstruction Teams to expand operations to all provinces. Moreover, cooperation still suffers from rivalries among various actors as well as from the roles they interpret differently.
Because of the deteriorating security situation and attacks on soldiers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are dissociating themselves further from military reconstruction projects. NGOs fear for their safety, as ISAF troops patrol in civil vehicles, trying to avoid attacks. In Helmand, on the other hand, the British military is accusing aid organisations, including NGOs, of dragging their feet on implementing visible projects in “liberated zones”. It is true: Coordinating measures of military security closer with those of civilian reconstruction may yet prove decisive for making the entire intervention succeed – or fail.
4. The international community has given in to Afghanistan’s lingering culture of lawlessness. The International Crisis Group (2006) considers “rule of law” the “missing link” in the nation-building strategy.
Despite objections, Hamid Karzai pushed through a strong presidential system of government – with a weak parliament and marginal provincial councils. He appoints governors, senators and police chiefs, which enables him to engage in patronage politics. The population, however, perceives that practice as lawless. Five years after the Taliban were overthrown, there is not even a rudimentary base for any “rule of law” worthy of the term.
5. Too much emphasis was placed on kick-starting civil society, and too little on building infrastructures. What Afghanistan needed in 2002 was a “new deal”, with major infrastructure projects creating many jobs. Instead, it got hundreds of well-meant programmes on conflict resolution and gender mainstreaming.
Since the intervention, not a single big dam has been built and no major transmission line set up. Donors never bothered to check whether their free-market doctrines were compatible with Afghanistan’s ground reality – nor was this topic ever discussed at policy level. Many programmes reflect the visions of the interventionists rather than tackle the needs of the Afghans. For civil society to really flourish after a quarter century of destruction, living standards have to rise first.
In Kabul over the past few years, the international community has installed a Potemkinesque version of civil society. But it hardly took account of the people’s deep frustration stemming from the of lack of personal and economic security in the provinces. Beliefs in “conflict transformation” and “willingness to engage in discourse” led international helpers to pay too little attention to the conservatism of the local players and the true nature of power relations. A little more Machiavelli and a little less Habermas wouldn’t harm.
Conclusion
Five years after the overthrow of the Taliban, Afghanistan offers a sobering picture. Karzai’s government is weak, the international community has failed to restore security and the rule of law, and most Afghans still wait to see their standard of living rise. In view of the aid billions promised, people are very angry. The resurgent Taliban movement in the south is threatening further development – and even the political stability of the entire country.
With a tendency of exacerbating rather than eliminating contradictions, nation-building efforts in Afghanistan have so far remained unaware of just how violently traditional notions of authority clash with modern ones. If the south is to be regained, more troops will be needed (Rubin, 2006) as well as more reconstruction money. However, higher aid spending will in the long run boost the rent-seeking character of the state, thus further weakening the authority of the Karzai administration (Suhrke, 2006). Afghanistan was always a rent-seeking society. Therefore, one needs to discuss the limits of purely market-driven approaches. The potentially conflict-laden Afghan tradition of a factually weak, but rhetorically strong central state is upheld, not corrected, by the centralising framework of the Petersberg Accord.
It was wrong to believe that generic formula for quick reconstruction in post-conflict states applied to Afghanistan (Suhrke, 2006). In any case, it should be considered whether we are really dealing with re-construction in a post-conflict land. What matters now is to rethink and readdress the task of nation-building in Afghanistan, not as a “standard procedure” (Suhrke, 2006b), but as a socio-political modernisation project with contentious implications. Afghanistan has no chance if the parallel worlds of the presidential palace and donor conferences do not give way to a new synthesis of realism and commitment.
Rolf Paasch
has headed the Kabul office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation since December 2005. Previously he was the foreign-affairs reporter for the Frankfurter Rundschau. He is expressing his personal views here.
r.paasch@t-online.de
References:
International Crisis Group, November 2006:
“Countering Afghanistan’s insurgency”
Rubin, Barnett R., 2006: “Still ours to lose: Afghanistan on the brink”, Testimony to the House Committee on International Relations, 20. Sept., Washington, D.C.
Suhrke, Astri, 2006: „The limits of statebuilding: The role of international
assistance in Afghanistan“, Christian Michelsen Institute (CMI), http://www.cmi.no/publications/publication.cfm?pubid=2135
Suhrke, Astri, 2006b: “When more is less: aiding statebuilding in Afghanisatn”, FRIDE Working Paper 9/2006, http://www.fride.org
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