Archive for March, 2010

A new START

Posted on: March 26th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr

The new US-Russia agreement to reduce their nuclear arsenals (which reports say they have now concluded) certainly warrants the Joe Biden phrase for major accomplishments “a big …ing deal.”.[i] But in one sense it is less than meets the eye.

The very fact of a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty is worthy of celebration. It signals, and locks in, a continued downward trajectory in nuclear arsenals, it gives substance to the Obama/Medvedev commitment to the joint pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons, and it revives essential verification provisions that are absent in the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT – also known as the Moscow Treaty), signed by George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin.

But when the numbers are fully parsed, some will feel a lot like US health reform enthusiasts, celebrating the reform that was finally accomplished but lamenting that it wasn’t all they had dared to hope it would be.

The New York Times reports that warheads are to be cut to 1,550 and warhead delivery vehicles (missiles and bombers) are to be capped at 800.[ii] And the best source for the numbers behind the numbers is Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists who tabulates current nuclear force levels for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.[iii]

The reduction of warheads to 1,550 is at least a 25 percent cut from the 2,200 allowed for deployment under the Moscow Treaty (the Obama/Medvedev framework agreement signed at the start of negotiations put the target in the range between 1,500 to 1,675 strategic warheads on each side).[iv] The US has already reached the Moscow Treaty target of 2,200 and Russia is close to being there (2012 being the target date for meeting that level), but both maintain warheads in reserve and still have a significant stock awaiting dismantlement (about 6,700, combined, in the US and 7,300 in Russia). In addition, the Americans have about 500 deployed non-strategic warheads and Russia about 2,000.

In other words, unless both sides reduce their reserve and non-strategic warheads and accelerate dismantling of warheads, the 1,550 deployed warheads on each side could still be accompanied by inventories of up to 7,200 and 9,300 warheads in the US and Russia respectively.

That in turn means that after the START agreement is fully implemented, the two could still have huge inventories of warheads: the US with 8,750 (1,550 deployed strategic warheads, 500 deployed non-strategic, 2,500 in reserve, 4,200 awaiting dismantlement); and Russia with (1,550 deployed strategic warheads, 2,000 deployed non-strategic, 7,300 in reserve and awaiting dismantlement). That means, in theory at last, almost 20,000 warheads could still be held by the two big nuclear powers, with a combined total of another 1,000 or more held by the other states with nuclear weapons.

Now, that is a worst-case scenario and the US and Russia will most certainly have dismantled a substantial number of warheads by then, so the totals will in fact be considerably lower. US arms control watchers report that the Obama administration could accelerate the rate of warhead dismantlement from about 250 per year to 400 a year.[v] So, over the life of the new seven-year START agreement, the US inventory of deployed and stored warheads could decline from the current total of 9,400 to about 6,000 (with experts cautioning that dismantlement is a technically difficult process that must be done safely and can’t be rushed).

As regards delivery vehicles, the missiles and bombers from which weapons would be launched, the framework agreement going into the negotiations set the target maximum at between 500 and 1,100, and, as noted above, the New York Times reports that the new START agreement will set the maximum number at 800 on each side, down from 1,600 agreed to in the earlier START agreement (the Moscow Treaty did not address delivery vehicles).

If the agreed level is indeed set at 800, it will not be difficult for either side to comply since they both are already below that level. The US now has 798 deployed delivery vehicles, while Russia is already below 600 – and both are moving toward further reductions.

The new START agreement is a good start, and there are reasons to believe that both the US and Russia could go even lower than the agreement mandates in their actual deployments. In other words, the Treaty does not set a very high bar, or, in this case, a very low bar, but even at that there will be those in the US Senate who will argue (vociferously, as we’ve come to expect of the US Congress) that it leaves the US weak and defenseless. A big issue will be what the Treaty has to say about ballistic missile defence. The New York Times reports that the preamble to the Treaty acknowledges a relationship between offensive weapons and missile defence, but in non-binding language. For some Republicans in a mood to frustrate the current Administration, that will likely be enough to fire up the oppositional rhetoric.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] “Biden on ‘F—ing Deal’,” The Huffington Post, 25 March 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/25/biden-on-big-f—ing-deal_n_512555.html.

[ii] Peter Baker and Ellen Barry, “Russia and US Report Breakthrough on Arms

[iii] The numbers reported here are taken from:

Hans M. Kristensen, “START Follow-On: What SORT of Agreement?” the Federation of American Scientists Strategic Security Blog, 8 July 2009. http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2009/07/start.php.

Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “Russian nuclear forces, 2010,” January/February 2010, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientistshttp://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/4337066824700113/.

Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “US nuclear forces, 2009,” March/April 2009, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientistshttp://www.thebulletin.org/files/065002008.pdf.

[iv] “Joint Understanding,” signed by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, July 2008, 2009. The White House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Joint-Statement-by-President-Dmitriy-Medvedev-of-the-Russian-Federation-and-President-Barack-Obama-of-the-United-States-of-America/.

[v] Elain M. Grossman, “Obama Team Might Speed Up Disassembly of Older Nuclear Warheads,” Global Security Newswire, 1 March 2010. http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/siteservices/print_friendly.php?ID=nw_20100301_9520.

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The appeal, and folly, of minimum deterrence

Posted on: March 19th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr

The current nuclear disarmament debate in the United States has been given an unusual twist by a group of US Air Force officials and academics who reject the goal of elimination but argue for radical, and unilateral, reductions in the US nuclear arsenal.

To say that elements within the US Air Force are calling for radical nuclear reductions is, if anything, an understatement. In the current issue of Strategic Studies Quarterly,[i] two Department of Defense academics and a serving Air Force Colonel argue for a nuclear deterrence strategy based on an arsenal of 311 deployed nuclear warheads – 100 on land-based missiles (ICBMs), 195 on submarine-based missiles (SLBMs), and 19 on bomber-based cruise missiles (ALCMs).

In reaching that conclusion, however, these Air Force analysts explicitly reject the vision of a world without nuclear weapons and mount a spirited defence of the enduring benefits of nuclear deterrence and the weapons that deliver it.

Stability in a competitive international environment is preserved to a significant degree by deterrence – that is, an adversary is dissuaded from taking certain destabilizing or aggressive actions by the promise that unacceptable damage will be visited on it in response. Thus, as the Air Force analysts put it, general deterrence policy is designed “to ensure that incentives for aggression never outweigh the disincentives.”

Most states, most of the time, abjure aggression because of persuasive incentives to respect the sovereignty of other states – that is, they benefit from a stable world in which their rights as states are respected and in which military aggression is the rare exception. At the same time, most states also maintain conventional forces to add disincentives – that is, to assure their neighbors and adversaries that aggression would incur costs.

And the most persuasive disincentive or threat is, obviously, the threat of nuclear attack – “nuclear weapons socialize statesmen to the dangers of adventurism,” say the Air Force analysts. Hence, the main thrust of their argument is to support the maintenance of a nuclear deterrent for the long-term foreseeable future. And, they add, it needs to be only a minimal deterrent – a few hundred warheads are capable of delivering all the threats needed to persuade or dissuade any adversary.

But then they add a caveat: “…because the adversary will discount these threats by its assessment of the likelihood that the deterrer will implement them, the deterrer must convey these threats credibly.” In other words, that puts us pretty much back where we were in the Cold War when the Americans and Soviets went to insane lengths (in excess of 70,000 warheads) to demonstrate the credibility of their deterrent.

Credibility isn’t just a minor problem for nuclear deterrence – it is a central characteristic of deterrence and renders it intrinsically unstable.

The Air Force analysts say that nuclear weapons are sufficiently credible to “virtually preclud[e] acts of aggression against states that possess them, and thereby greatly enhance stability.” But that ignores two fundamental, and rather obvious, problems – both of which signal instability.

First, the scenario posits a nuclear state threatening a non-nuclear weapon state, even though nuclear weapon states have since 1996 formally agreed to “negative security assurances” – that is, the explicit commitment never to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states. They make that promise because it is in their interests to do so, and it is in their interests because it is an essential requirement for non-proliferation. If nuclear weapon states issue nuclear threats against states without nuclear weapons, the latter have only two credible options – either become aligned with another nuclear weapon state and thus find solace (and dependence) under its umbrella, or work hard to acquire an independent nuclear deterrent for themselves. Nuclear threats against non-nuclear weapon states produce incentives to proliferate – the opposite of stability. That is why the US is seriously considering the inclusion of a “sole purpose” pledge in its forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review – a pledge that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter their use by other states. And it is also why non-nuclear weapon states have been demanding that negative security assurance be changed from national declarations to legally-binding international agreements.

So, it is the absence of nuclear threats that contributes to non-proliferation stability. Nuclear deterrence against non-nuclear weapon states creates proliferation incentives and is therefore inherently unstable.

Second, if a nuclear weapon state is in confrontation with another nuclear weapon state, the use of a nuclear weapon – that is, actually carrying out the deterrent threat – would obviously be suicidal because it would trigger a response in kind. Whether it is minimum or maximum deterrence, there is no getting around MAD, mutually assured destruction. That fact obviously undermines the credibility of the deterrent (why would you use it if the guaranteed result was your own destruction?). That in turn creates the perceived need to make the deterrent more credible – by making it bigger, by improved accuracy for counterforce threats to take out large elements of the other side’s weapons to reduce its retaliatory capacity, by ballistic missile defence systems which are also designed to reduce the capacity to retaliate and thus enhance the threat of first use. These moves are then obviously mimicked by the other side. In other words, there is no stability – only the chronic instability of innovation and counter-innovation, otherwise known as an arms race.

Nuclear arsenals are anything but stable. They follow trajectories. In the Cold War it was an escalating trajectory, since the end of the Cold War it has been a descending trajectory. But there are already signs of reversal. China is modernizing. US missile defence is producing escalatory pressures in Russia. Pakistan and India, both declared devotees of minimum deterrence, have not found stability and are both busily building up their arsenals and their stocks of fissile materials. Israel’s refusal to open its nuclear facilities to international inspections continues as a major impediment to consensus within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review process. States without nuclear weapons in that region are looking to give themselves nuclear options – and the greater the perception that more states, like Iran followed by other Arab states in the Middle East, will acquire the capacity to go nuclear, even if they don’t immediately do so, the more difficult it is to build the political will for radical reductions in nuclear weapon states.

The call by analysts linked to the US Air Force for radical and unilateral reductions in the US arsenal to 311 deployed warheads is a welcome call to continue the current nuclear trajectory on a downward path. At the same time, even minimum deterrence will not serve long-term stability. Deterrence is not a stable condition – the only credible basis for stability is the one envisioned in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, namely, the elimination of all arsenals, backed by a verification system capable of giving credible, long-term assurances that all states are in full compliance.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] James Wood Forsythe Jr., Col. B. Chance Saltzman, and Gary Schaub Jr. “Remembrance of Things Past: The Enduring Value of Nuclear Weapons,” Strategic Studies Quarterly, Spring 2010, pp. 74-89.http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/2010/spring/forsythsaltzmanschaub.pdf.

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Reconciliation in Afghanistan: At what price?

Posted on: March 9th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr

While the battles of the US-led military surge rage with renewed intensity in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, off the battlefield, much of the talk and not a few questions focus on the merits reconciliation.

Reconciliation in the Afghanistan context refers to diplomacy that seeks to engage insurgency leaders in pursuit of a political settlement that will end the fighting. [i] With the current surge in fighting, reconciliation remains an elusive goal; nevertheless, even the prospects of diplomatic engagement with the Taliban and other elements of the insurgency are continuing to raise serious and legitimate concerns. A central question is, will reconciliation with extremist insurgents mean losing hard won gains in human rights and civil liberties?

The hope that intensified warfare[ii] will hasten the insurgents’ move to a negotiating table has to contend with the sobering reality that more than eight years of war, including continuing civilian deaths at the hands of international forces,[iii] have not only failed to set the insurgents back on their heels, but have witnessed the growth of the insurgency (with estimates of more than 30,000 fighters now)[iv] and its spread to the point where the journalist, author, and expert on Afghan and Pakistani affairs, Ahmed Rashid, reports that “the Afghan Taliban are now a countrywide movement.”[v]

The word “reconciliation” appears only once in the 3600 word communiqué issued at the end of the January 2010 London Conference on Afghanistan, and it appears not as a topic of the London discussions but in the context of acknowledging another conference – the summit meeting held by Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkey in Istanbul which declared support for “Afghan-led peace, reintegration and reconciliation efforts.”[vi]President Hamid Karzai’s speech to the London Conference, on the other hand, made prominent reference to reconciliation, including his plan to create a “National Council for Peace, Reconciliation and Reintegration;”[vii] the conference communiqué’s reference to it welcomed only a “national Peace and Reintegration Programme.”[viii]

This conspicuous official-level failure to promote reconciliation reflects a larger reluctance in the international community to fully embrace a diplomatic track for ending the conflict – though the Obama Administration has in general signaled its support for political accommodation.[ix] But many of those who are open to reconciliation in principle worry both about timing and about the human rights implications.

The timing argument easily becomes an argument against negotiations in principle, opposing talks with either an ascendant or a retreating Taliban. On the one hand, there is no point in talking to an ascendant Taliban because it will be disinclined to compromise; on the other hand, there is no need to seek compromise with a retreating Taliban.

The reluctance to negotiate that is linked to human rights concerns is more clearly rooted in questions of basic justice. Canadian Chris Alexander, the very effective former Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan and former deputy special representative of the UN Secretary General for Afghanistan, agreed in a recent public lecture that while the Bonn Agreement of 2001 was not a genuine peace agreement because the party that shortly before that had controlled 95 percent of the country (the Taliban) was not at the table, he at the same time explicitly rejected any negotiations leading to power-sharing. The Taliban record of extraordinary human rights abuses while in office, as well as their terrorist tactics since being driven out of office, disqualified them as partners in a new peace agreement.[x]

That position is amplified by the noted Australian expert on Afghanistan, William Maley. He says, not only does talk of negotiating with the Taliban “send shivers down the spines of significant elements in the Afghan population, starting with Afghan women and members of ethnic and sectarian minorities,” but a deal with the Taliban would have additional catastrophic effects. It would take the air out of Afghanistan’s slow transition to modernity, it would lead to the rearming of anti-Taliban groups, and it would lead to sanctuary for Pakistani Taliban in Afghanistan.[xi]

Similar reservations are also heard from Afghan professionals and urbanites in Kabul, genuinely fearful that the gains they have made in basic rights and liberties since 2001 would be entirely lost or drastically eroded in any political settlement that would give the Taliban and other insurgent groups a share of the power and an opportunity to re-establish elements of the draconian rule that characterized their regime of the 1990s.

Juan Cole of the Global American Institute reports on a survey that indicates that, not surprisingly, non-Pashtun communities are most wary of reconciliation with the Taliban, citing, among others, Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazarah concerns that negotiations could lead to the restoration of the harsh conditions of Taliban rule. While supporting reconciliation efforts in principle, for example, the Hazarah dominated Afghanistan People’s Islamic Unity Party issued a statement after the London Conference  saying that “any type of reconciliation effort must fully respect Afghanistan’s Constitution and values such as democracy, freedom of expression, human rights, women’s rights, and Afghanistan’s multi-ethnic structure, political, religious, and cultural diversity.” Presidential candidate Abdullah Abdulla called for a national dialogue about reconciliation with the Taliban – “People want to know,” he said, “if they are going back to the Islamization of the Taliban government that was ousted in 2001.”[xii]

The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) has recently also warned against reconciliation at the expense of accountability, citing Afghanistan’s “National Reconciliation, General Amnesty and National Stability Law.” The ICTJ says the law offers “an amnesty for all involved in the Afghan conflict, regardless of whether they merely took up arms or were responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity. Amnesties are frequently part of peace negotiations, but international law forbids amnesties for serious war crimes.” Sari Kouvo, the head of ICTJ’s Afghanistan program, said that “while reconciliation is needed to end the conflicts in Afghanistan, it should not be promoted by further entrenching a culture of impunity.”[xiii]

All this, it must be recalled, in the context of almost universal acceptance that the Taliban and wider insurgency is unlikely to be defeated, the war will not be ended, on the battlefield.

So it is clear that political reconciliation, supported by effective reintegration programs, is what points the way out of the Afghanistan war. But for it to be a durable political settlement, one that preserves and gradually expands the rights and freedoms of Afghans, the process leading to it will have to be comprehensive, inclusive of Afghan women and men from all walks of life and communities, and guided by human rights law and basic principles of transitional justice.

It is a principle easier said than done – but it bears saying. A 2001 Amnesty International statement made just one month after the US-led attack applies equally well today:

“There is as yet no indication of how long the military action will continue, but there are already discussions about the political future for Afghanistan after the conflict. It is essential that an agenda for human rights and social justice for all Afghans is developed on the basis of broad consultation and participation by the widest possible cross section of Afghan society. Solutions cannot be imposed from the outside and must be decided by the Afghan people. The UN has a substantive part to play in facilitating this process.”[xiv]

Amnesty’s call for “broad consultation and participation” is echoed in Abdullah Abdullah’s current call for a “national dialogue.” In the final stages of negotiations to end any protracted war, when the focus turns to exit strategies, negotiators are invariably tempted to cut deals, even if that means trading away commitments to inclusiveness and basic principles of justice. It is a temptation they can’t resist on their own – they need the guidance of a fully engaged and consulted population. That in turn means the international community now needs to become fully fixated on developing the mechanisms for engagement and consultation that will draw in all segments of Afghan society and the cooperation of Afghanistan’s neighbors – in other words, a mechanism to meaningfully engage those whose future is on the line.

At the same time, there can obviously be no expectation that a new peace process, no matter how comprehensive, can meet the human rights challenges in a single agreement. A report recently circulated by Amnesty International says that “more than 87 per cent of Afghan women suffer from domestic abuse, according to the UN, and between 60 and 80 per cent of marriages are forced.”[xv] Fundamental change in the homes and villages of Afghanistan will not come quickly and will not be delivered via a new peace agreement – what reconciliation can deliver is an end to fighting, under which the generations long struggle for human rights can be rejoined with renewed promise.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] Aunohita Mojumdar, “Afghanistan: Decoding Reintegration and Reconciliation,” Eurasia Insight, 9 February 2010.  http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav020910b.shtml.

[ii] ISAF officials were calling Operation “Moshtarak” (meaning “together”) as the biggest joint operation since the 2001 US-led attacks, involving 15,000 troops. Alfred de Montesquiou, “NATO: Troops miss target, kill 12 Afghan civilians,” 14 February 2010, The Associated Press.http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvWEqwq3CrRvaQCmt21MfoYhjZJQD9DS0UO00.

[iii] “Civilian teath toll climbs in Afghan offensive,” The Associated Press, MSNBC.COM, 16 February 2010.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35369975/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia;

Josh Wingrove, “Afghan offensive marred by civilian deaths,” The Globe and Mail, 16 February 2010.http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=NzExMTgzNw%3D%3D.

[iv] Jerome Starkey Kabul, “Major-General Richard Barrons puts Taleban fighter numbers at 36,000,” The Times, 3 March 2010. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7047321.ece.

[v] Ahmed Rashid, “What will it take to talk?” The Globe and Mail, 27 January 2010.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/what-will-it-take-to-talk-to-the-taliban/article1446638/.

[vi] The meeting, the “Istanbul Regional Summit on Friendship and Cooperation in the ‘Heart of Asia’,” pledged support for “Afghan-led peace, reintegration and reconciliation efforts,” and notably to work actively for “ending support wherever it occurs on each other’s territory for illegally-armed groups, parallel structures and illegal financing directed towards destabilizing Afhanistan or individual neighbors.” Paragraph 28 of the Communiqué of “Afghanistan: The London Conference.”

[vii] President Hamid Karai, Opening Remarks, London Conference on Afghanistan, 28 January 2010.http://www.blogs.mod.uk/afghanistan/2010/01/foreign-and-commonwealth-office-london-conference-on-afghanistan-hamid-karzais-opening-remarks-.html.

[viii] Communiqué of “Afghanistan: The London Conference,” 28 January 2010. Paragraph 13.http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/UNAMA_CommuniqueOfAfghanistanTheLondonConference.pdf.

[ix] “Washington’s new approach combines a readiness to negotiate and compromise (even with significant elements of the Taliban leadership) in order to end the war with a belief that it needs to do so fdrom a position of clear military strength. Operation Moshtarak is the first major step in this military-diplomatic process.” Paul Rogers, “Afghanistan: propaganda of the deed,” openDemocracy.net. 11 February 2010.http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/afghanistan-propaganda-of-deed.

[x] His new paper (February 2010), Ending the Agony: Seven Moves to Stabilize Afghanistan, is available as Paper Number 3 of the Afghanistan Papers of the Centre for International Governance Innovation,http://www.cigionline.org/publications/2010/2/ending-agony-seven-moves-stabilize-afghanistan.

[xi] William Maley, States of Conflict: A case study on state-building in Afghanistan, Institute for Public Policy Research (UK), November 2009. http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=717.

[xii] Juan Cole, Informed Comment, “Afghan Minority Parties Unenthusiastic about Reconciliation with Taliban,” 17 February 2010. http://www.juancole.com/2010/02/osc-afghan-minority-parties.html.

[xiii] “ICTJ Statement on Afghanistan Amnesty Law,” February 17, 2010.http://www.ictj.org/en/news/features/3456.html.

[xiv] Afghanistan: Making human rights the agenda, Amnesty International, 1 November 2001.http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA11/023/2001/en/7d5b9425-d8ca-11dd-ad8c-f3d4445c118e/asa110232001en.pdf.

[xv] Contact Hilary Homes, Campaigner:  International Justice, Security and Human Rights Amnesty International Canada [Security and Counter-terrorism: check out the blog www.amnesty.ca/security and receive regular updates via Twitter http://twitter.com/AI_SecureRights].

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Reintegration and Reconciliation in Afghanistan: In what order?

Posted on: March 4th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr

It remains a prominent hope of at least some of those managing the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan that a combination of reintegration and escalated fighting will create openings for the diplomacy that is essential to finally ending the war that, in the words of Prime Minister Harper,[i] will never be won.

In the current parlance of the Afghanistan conflict, reintegration is the war-time effort to persuade rank-and-file insurgents to quit fighting and lay down their arms in exchange for personal safety, immunity, and employment. Reconciliation is diplomacy that seeks to engage insurgency leaders in pursuit of a political settlement that will end the fighting.[ii] And, of course, many are hoping that the former can help to create favorable conditions for the latter.

The escalated fighting and the new reintegration plan are both pursued as war-fighting tactics – not so much to win the war as to set the insurgency back on its heels. A stalled insurgency, the reasoning goes, would create more favorable conditions for weaning fighters away from the insurgency and for inducing their leaders to seek negotiations with the Government of Afghanistan and its international partners.

The reintegration of former combatants into society is an essential, and effective, post-conflict measure to stabilize a ceasefire and to consolidate peace, but as a war-time tactic to undermine a still vigorous insurgency it has few persuasive precedents. Extensive post-Cold War experience in demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration programs (DDR)[iii] offers few examples of war-time reintegration. Analysts point to “spontaneous demobilization” efforts in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, for example, which led to some defections from the insurgency (the Revolutionary United Front – RUF), but were well short of being a “game changer.”[iv] There are examples of war-time reintegration of former child soldiers, but as humanitarian efforts to rescue children, not as a tactics to weaken an adversary. The US carried out an extensive amnesty program in Vietnam that produced many Viet Cong defections but had little impact on the outcome of the war.[v]

Reintegration was, nevertheless, a key theme of the January 2010 London Conference on Afghanistan. There was acknowledgement that such efforts have failed to date, but one of the chief outcomes of the conference was an agreement to try again and try harder. American envoy Richard Holbrooke seemed to have his expectations well in check when he told reporters that the new plan “can’t be worse” than earlier efforts.[vi]The conference thus welcomed “the plans of the Government of Afghanistan to offer an honorable place in society to those willing to renounce violence, participate in the free and open society and respect the principles that are enshrined in the Afghan constitution, cut ties with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and pursue their political goals peacefully.” The international community also established a Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund to finance the program and dramatically increased funding was promised.[vii]

Conversations in Kabul in the week preceding the conference did not elicit a lot of support for the view that rank-and-file insurgents are essentially mercenaries – fighting to earn a livelihood for their families, without really believing in the cause, and being amenable to switching sides if the price is right. Instead, the more prevailing view one heard from people anxious to see the insurgency ended, including academics and civil society representatives, was that while fighters are in many cases tiring of the fight, neither their own convictions nor the social pressures in their communities incline them toward switching sides and joining those still largely regarded as their “enemy.” It is a common testimony of Afghans that few of those now in the insurgency will be at ease on the sidelines of the war, turning away from the enormous personal and communal sacrifices already made to live as wards of the very government and international forces that their own community views with undiminished suspicion.

Amnesty programs are a legitimate feature of most armed conflicts and counterinsurgency campaigns. It is eminently laudable to give insurgents a genuine way of their circumstances. Nevertheless, experience suggests that Afghanistan will ultimately conform to the prevailing post-Cold War model for DDR in which reintegration follows reconciliation – that is, it follows a political process through which political leaders recognized as such by the insurgents, even if these are largely local rather than national leaders, agree to integrate with the prevailing order. Only then are rank and file fighters likely to lay down their arms in significant numbers. By design and by prevailing practice, DDR generally takes place after a ceasefire, not as a means of getting to a ceasefire.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] “We are not going to ever defeat the insurgency,” Stephen Harper told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview that aired March 1, 2009. “Afghanistan has probably had — my reading of Afghanistan history — it’s probably had an insurgency forever, of some kind.” Canada’s Harper doubts Afghan insurgency can be defeated, CNN.Com, 1 March 2009.http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/03/02/canada.afghanistan/index.html.

[ii] Aunohita Mojumdar, “Afghanistan: Decoding Reintegration and Reconciliation,” Eurasia Insight, 9 February 2010.  http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav020910b.shtml.

[iii] “DDR is essentially a politically driven process, and its success depends on the will of the parties to the conflict to demilitarize after conflict. This political will is usually reflected in a commitment by these parties to disarm and demobilize military personnel in formal armed forces or other armed groups, within the framework of a ceasefire agreement or comprehensive peace accord.” Operational Guide to the IDDRS, the UN Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration Resource Centre, pp 24-26.http://www.unddr.org/iddrs/iddrs_guide.php.

[iv] Interview.

[v] Powerpoint: Colin Jackson and Austin Long, Political Science, MIT Selective Amnesty and Counter-insurgency: Malaya, Vietnam, and Iraq. http://web.mit.edu/polisci/research/iiwwg/combined_amnesty.ppt.

[vi] Sue Pleming, “US optimistic over new Taliban reintegration plan,” Reuters, 16 January 2010.http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60F1EJ20100116.

[vii] Communiqué of “Afghanistan: The London Conference,” 28 January 2010. Paragraph 13.http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/UNAMA_CommuniqueOfAfghanistanTheLondonConference.pdf.

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