Posts Tagged ‘Afghanistan’

A recent NGO conference in Afghanistan, sponsored by Ottawa’s Peacebuild, explored various dimensions of reconciliation and the need for a comprehensive peace process. The following is an adaptation of my presentation on the role and functioning of multilateral military forces in the absence of such a process.

While the task at hand is to discuss the role of international military forces in “protecting a peace process,” the real focus is the way in which an effective and inclusive peace process is essential to “protecting” multilateral security and peace support operations.

One of the most difficult things to accept about military force, especially international forces that have peace and stability as their formal objective, is just how limited military might is when it tries to force stability. In popular discourse there is a tendency to assume that when everything else fails, when all political and diplomatic efforts have failed to resolve a conflict, we can still turn to military action as a last resort to finally get the job done.

But as Afghans know better than most, military forces, no matter how powerful or sophisticated, cannot ignore political and social contexts and cannot simply reshape reality to fit their own objectives. The presence of international forces obviously influences political outcomes, including peace negotiations, and they clearly achieve tactical objectives. But the lessons of history are legion in reminding us that tactical military victories don’t on their own win wars, or, more importantly, win the peace. For military forces to contribute to stability and peace, they depend on, and they need in turn to bolster, an enabling political, social, and cultural context.

This reality has been recognized by those who, through the UN, have extensive experience in managing international military forces. The UN has, therefore, established some basic principles or guidelines to inform and shape constructive international military interventions. The following explores five key realities emphasized in those UN guidelines and links them to issues related to comprehensive peace agreements.

1. Multilateral Peace Support Forces require strategic consent: The first and central point is that the foundational principle of multilateral peace support interventions is that they are conceived of primarily as actions taken within the context of a negotiated political settlement or comprehensive peace agreement. This applies to all current UN-commanded operations. In particular, they include agreements through which all the key parties to a conflict give consent to the international forces. That is “strategic level consent,” and without it international forces risk moving from a peace support role to being a party to the conflict.

In other words, a comprehensive peace agreement which sanctions and mandates security forces orients those international and national forces in support of the new post-war political order.

This, to a large extent, describes the situation that obtained in Afghanistan in early 2002 when the Bonn process led to a peace agreement and the establishment of an interim government, along with electoral and other processes to legitimize that new government. It, of course, included provisions for a multinational peace support force, the International Security Assistance Force.

But there is one critically important dimension of the situation in Afghanistan, in the period immediately following the war that removed the Taliban Government of the day, which did not follow this archetypal formula. Most notably, the peace agreement did not include the political party or movement that had been in control of most of the country only a few months earlier – the assumption was that the Taliban had been vanquished. So the Bonn process did not meet the requirements for a fully inclusive or comprehensive peace agreement. As a consequence, it was almost inevitable that the strategic consent on which the multilateral forces relied would not be sustained.

The UN guidelines put it this way:^[i] “in the absence of such consent, a [multilateral peace support] operation risks becoming a party to the conflict; and being drawn towards enforcement action, and away from its intrinsic role of keeping the peace” (Chapter 3, p. 32), or supporting the extension of state authority.

2. Strategic Consent does not obviate tactical combat: While the first point emphasizes the centrality of strategic consent, given initially through a durable political accord, the second point is to acknowledge that such an accord, even if it is comprehensive and conclusive, cannot guarantee the end of all violence. Even with strategic consent for foreign forces in place, there can obviously still be challenges to the new order. Challenges in such circumstances are linked to the presence of spoilers – smaller pockets of resistance or even organized criminal elements eager to take advantage of the fragile situation and the absence of well-established security institutions.

“The fact that the main parties have given their consent to the deployment,” says the United Nations in the context of peacekeeping operations, “does not necessarily imply or guarantee that there will also be consent at the local level.” For example, the presence of armed groups not under the control of any of the key parties, or the presence of criminal operations, represent spoilers that must be dealt with by international and national security forces.

So a multilateral force that enjoys strategic consent may still be required to actively conduct tactical police and combat operations to apprehend or in some way deal with such spoilers – but, by virtue of the comprehensive peace agreement, the context should be one of broad public support for the newly established authority and support for operations to control the spoilers.

3. When tactical resistance erases strategic consent: There comes a point, however, when tactical operations against spoilers escalate to such a level that they effectively nullify strategic consent. That is in effect the point at which the tactical operations become strategic level operations against a broad-based political opposition movement that can boast a significant constituency of political support. When that happens there has in reality been the de facto withdrawal of consent at the strategic level. And at that point the military operation has switched from a peace support operation to a peace enforcement operation – that is a war against insurgents.

When strategic consent is no longer present, multilateral forces can find themselves in full combat with a significant opposition force that can, with some credibility, claim to be fighting on behalf of a significant element of a population that has lost confidence in the political agreement produced by the original peace agreement.

That is arguably the story in Afghanistan since 2005.

4. Restoring or recovering strategic consent: History and a myriad of specific cases confirm that to rely heavily on greater force to recover national consensus and restore strategic consent simply doesn’t work. In other words, the loss of strategic consent is rarely reversed by military means alone, or even primarily. The basic reality is this: insurgencies with a significant base in part of the population are not readily amenable to military defeat.

Indeed, that is the conclusion of an oft-quoted Rand study – “How Terrorist Groups End.” Of 268 such groups that ended over a period of almost 40 years (1968-2006):^[ii]

• 40% “were penetrated and eliminated by local police and intelligence agencies”;
• 43% “reached a peaceful political accommodation with their government” (in negotiations they moved to progressively narrower demands);
• 10% won; and
• In only 7%  of cases did “military force [lead] to the end of terrorist groups.”

Similarly, a University of Barcelona study looked at 80 civil and interstate armed conflicts, and, of those that ended during that period (just over half):^[iii]

• 15% ended through victory of one side or the other; and
• The rest through negotiations.

The noted British military commander of a variety of collective security operations, General Sir Rupert Smith, insists that no strategic objective can be achieved through military force alone. Military force can meet tactical objectives, but these must in turn serve a strategic plan that engages a much broader range of non-military measures to resolve conflict and to build conditions for a durable peace.^[iv]

Thus, military force is not self-sufficient. It requires political, social, and law enforcement institutions to consolidate its gains, and its effectiveness is constrained by the environment in which it functions, just as the effectiveness of peacebuilding depends on the environment in which it is pursued. There are inescapable limits to the effectiveness of force that cannot be overcome simply by the application of greater force.^[v]

It is a reality that seems now to be increasingly recognized by the leaders of the international forces operating in Afghanistan – commonly expressed through declarations that there is no military solution. That in turn points obviously to the need to refocus the political agenda on the renegotiation or recovery of strategic consent through a new comprehensive peace process.

5. Recovering strategic consent through a comprehensive peace process: The key word here is process, because any peace accord, even when it is comprehensive, is not a once-and-for-all achievement. It needs to be constantly and continually renewed.

Again, the UN guidelines are instructive: “In the implementation of its mandate, a [peace support operation] must work continuously to ensure that it does not lose the consent of the main parties, while ensuring that the peace process moves forward.” (Chapter 3, p. 32)

But it is also a much larger point. The legitimacy of a new political order or new Government is not established once and for all – it is earned and renewed, or eroded, on a daily basis. But, equally important, the legitimacy of an international security assistance force must also be earned and renewed on a daily basis. The legitimacy of international forces is not established once and for all by a Security Council resolution; it is earned, and eroded, daily by virtue of the conduct and effectiveness of those forces.

Part of the premise of this conference is that, when strategic consent and national consensus are lost, central to their recovery must be a new and comprehensive peace process leading ultimately to a new political agreement or framework for a rejuvenated national consensus. As far as the question of multilateral military forces is concerned, the objective is a political context in which multilateral forces earn legitimacy through their daily conduct and operations, and in which strategic consent is reflected in broad public acceptance of security forces as peace support agents, not occupying forces. Within that political climate the population will recognize there is still a need to deal with spoilers, but it will also be clear that international forces are no longer engaged in an effort to militarily force the acquiescence of a national political/social constituency that finds itself outside the national consensus.

Notes

[i] United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines. United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Department of Field Support. 2008.

http://pbpu.unlb.org/PBPS/Library/Capstone_Doctrine_ENG.pdf

[ii] Seth Jones, Jones, Seth G., and Martin Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida (Rand Corporation, 2008), 225 pp.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG741-1.pdf

[iii] Fisas, Vicenç. 2008 Peace Process Yearbook. School for a Culture of Peace, University of Barcelona, 2008.

[iv] Smith, Rupert. The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World. London, 2006.

[v] Regehr, Ernie. “Failed States and the Limits of Force: The Challenge of Afghanistan.” In Fragile States or Failing Development? Canadian Development Report 2008, pp. 1–23. Ottawa, 2007.

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].

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.

CIGI Senior Fellow Mark Sedra has launched an excellent new blog on Afghanistan, “Dispatches from the Field: Perspectives on the Afghanistan Conflict,” available athttp://www.cigionline.org/publications/blogs/dispatches. In addition to his own commentaries, Mark regularly invites guest postings. The following is my January 24 post from Kabul, sent during  my recent visit there.

It doesn’t take long for a visitor to Kabul to encounter this city’s particular definition of normal. Last Monday, the day after arriving, there was the unannounced but not unexpected insurgent attack in central Kabul. The subsequent lock down of much of the city, which included a rather pleasant stay in an Embassy bunker when the ensuing fire-fight seemed to security personnel to be moving closer, was taken in stride as largely routine.

The stepped up police checks throughout the week are all part of the normal life of this busy, bustling city.

But there is another kind of more mundane but utterly compelling normalcy in contemporary Kabul. I encountered an example of it at a crowded board room table in the University of Kabul. The occasion was an extended and detailed discussion by a group of Afghan social scientists who were working their way through a detailed research questionnaire. The point was to get it right for the imminent launch of an ambitious research project. Anywhere else a non-social scientist would have been tempted to tune out of the arcane and technical debate. In this setting, however, it went beyond being a practical requirement of professional researchers to being a powerful symbol of a community’s careful and ongoing response to a complex reality.

The research project is an effort to document, assess, and better understand a range of grievances and other conflict generators throughout Afghanistan. In the coming weeks a team of researchers from the Peace Studies unit of the University’s National Centre for Policy research will conduct individual interviews and focus groups for a project designed to advance the reconciliation agenda at local, national, and regional levels.

Amid the diverse challenges of life in a war-time city, a skilled and dedicated, though small, community of scholars has turned its attention to studying the complex and viscerally important dimensions of armed conflict in Afghanistan. They are determined to uncover the deep and often unacknowledged elements of local conflict on the assumption that sustainably ending the war through the negotiations that must finally come will be impossible without better understanding its roots.

As this intense scholarly discussion was winding down, various cell phones signaled a text message that came from ANSO, the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office. Shots had been fired in district 10, said the message, avoid that area when returning to the hotel from the University.

Situation normal.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Canadian churches “encourage Canada to mount a peace mission and to accord it the same level of political energy and commitment, along with requisite material support, as has been accorded the military mission to date.”

The Canadian Council of Churches has issued a new brief[i] calling on “Canada to mount a new peace mission in Afghanistan that focuses on two priorities: 1) support Afghans in implementing participatory reconciliation programs and responsive governance at district and local levels; 2) urge the international community to pursue diplomatic efforts to end the war.” The following is the executive summary.”[ii]

Studies consistently show that the conflict in Afghanistan has multiple and diverse sources, including: conflict over land and water; family and tribal grievances; the presence of Taliban, warlords and criminal elements; international forces; corrupt Afghan security forces and government officials. National-level diplomacy that does not reach into communities and address these grievances will not be successful.

Accordingly, while we welcome Canada’s efforts to facilitate Afghan-led reconciliation, it is clear that these require attention to sub-national conflict analysis and reconciliation possibilities.

Reconciliation and improved governance require inclusive dialogue with Afghans, as well as a shift from the primacy of anti-terrorism to a collective international and Afghan mission framed around human security for the people of Afghanistan. Such a mission requires both reaching beyond centralized institutions and a long-term commitment. And given the international community’s limited understanding of Afghan cultures and traditional authority structures, we urge Canadian support for detailed Afghan-led research and engagement at the community level.

There is a serious requirement for an enriched understanding of the needs and challenges of reconciliation, and thus these research efforts can themselves enhance understanding and function as additional mechanisms to advance renewed peacebuilding processes.

The long-term investment and maintenance that sub-national reconciliation activities will require has significant implications for Canada as it considers the scope of its future responsibilities in Afghanistan. The cessation of a military mission in 2011 should be followed by persistent support for an appropriate Canadian presence in reconciliation and sub-national governance efforts. Consultation with the Government of Afghanistan, its partners in Afghanistan, and organizations and personnel with a track record in sub-national and tribal outreach, as well as plenty of tea, will be essential going forward.

Furthermore, for local reconciliation and conflict mitigation efforts to endure, they ultimately must have the benefit of a stable national context. Ending the war is obviously foundational to that stability; hence, the second element of this appeal from the churches is for Canada to mount a serious effort to promote diplomacy and negotiations aimed at ending the war.

Steadily deteriorating security conditions speak to the now widely accepted judgement, shared by the Prime Minister and confirmed by counterinsurgency experience, that the war will not be resolved by means of a military victory by Afghan and international forces. And there are equally persuasive assessments that the insurgents also will not win – they will be unable to overthrow the Government in Kabul and re-establish a Taliban regime. While insurgents currently have the capacity to hold sway over the countryside in some regions, they do not have the capacity to capture and control the major urban areas. Some reports indicate that some insurgents increasingly recognize that there will be no military victory for them and that continuing war promises only “more futile bloodshed.”

In other words, Afghanistan can be said to be in a hurting stalemate. It is a situation in need of high-level diplomacy in pursuit of the kind of comprehensive and inclusive peace settlement that the Bonn Accords of 2001 and 2002 did not produce. The churches have repeatedly noted the importance of renewed political/diplomatic and civilian efforts to rebuild a basic national consensus in support of public institutions. Instead, the operational focus of the international community has been on militarily defeating those who feel themselves excluded and outside the Bonn consensus – but the war to defeat those outside the national consensus is failing.

In counseling Canadian promotion of Afghan reconciliation efforts, we affirm the fundamental principle that reconciliation, both at the sub-state level and in pursuit of a high-level political settlement, be Afghan-owned and led. But we do not assume Afghan-led to mean led by the Government of Afghanistan. The Afghan Government and its supporting international forces have been drawn into an entrenched civil war. The Government of Afghanistan must therefore be part of reconciliation efforts, but not the manager or custodian of the process. Part of the responsibility of the international community is to work with Afghans in and beyond the government to develop a trusted process through which reconciliation and negotiation efforts can begin.

Summary Recommendations:

We call on Canada, beginning now and continuing beyond 2011, to support outreach, research and pilot projects that are part of, and designed to further, the development of dynamic new local reconciliation efforts. Such activities should include appropriate dialogue with the Government of Afghanistan, collaboration with organizations with a demonstrated Afghan record of support for local governance and peacebuilding activity, and openness to work with traditional and informal authorities at local and district levels.

We further call for a Canadian diplomatic surge to persuade the international community to encourage and support Afghans in intensified and persistent dialogue or engagement efforts towards a military ceasefire and a sustainable political settlement.

In short, we encourage Canada to mount a peace mission and to accord it the same level of political energy and commitment, along with requisite material support, as has been accorded the military mission to date.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] The full brief is available at: http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Statements/CCCAfghanDec2009.pdf.

[ii] The brief was prepared on behalf of the Council by Peter Noteboom (CCC Associate Secretary for Justice and Peace), Mike Hogeterp (Christian Reformed Church in North America – Canada),  Remmelt Hummelen, John Lewis (KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives), and Ernie Regehr (Project Ploughshares). The CCC is the broadest ecumenical body in Canada, now representing 22 churches of Anglican, Evangelical, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions; together the Canadian Council of Churches represents 85 per cent of the Christians in Canada.

It’s hard to dispute the prevailing conclusion that all options in Afghanistan have become bad.[i] That includes the option that still earns only occasional and grudging mention – negotiation. But what distinguishes this option from all the others is its inevitability.

In his recent and widely dissected assessment of the Afghan security assistance mission, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the new US Commander in Afghanistan, raises the prospect of ending the war through reconciliation with insurgents – not as inevitability, but as likelihood:[ii]

“Insurgencies of this nature typically conclude through military operations and political efforts driving some degree of host-nation reconciliation with elements of the insurgency. In the Afghan conflict, reconciliation may involve [Government of Afghanistan]-led, high-level political settlements.”

A “high-level political settlement” was supposed to have been negotiated in Bonn in late 2001 and was to be the foundation on which the International Security Assistance Force[iii] was originally mounted in 2002. The war that has ensued is not a consequence of some parties to that agreement defecting from it but of the fact that it never was a comprehensive, inclusive agreement involving all the key stakeholders. Michael Semple, the European Union’s special representative in Afghanistan in 2004-2007, puts it this way in his new report for the United States Institute of Peace:[iv]

“It is now widely understood that the Bonn Accords did not constitute a peace agreement. They needed to be supplemented by a strategic pursuit of reconciliation in order to bring all Afghan parties to the conflict into the peaceful political process.”

That “strategic pursuit of reconciliation” has not happened. After the overthrow of the Taliban government, the Bonn process, confirmed through two loya jirgas, that extraordinary and enduring Afghan institution for national consensus building, produced a new institutional and governance framework. Ahmed Rashid, the noted Pakistani journalist, describes Afghanistan’s constitution, approved in 2003 at the second loya jirga, as “one of the most modern and democratic in the Muslim world.”[v]

Despite that, Afghanistan’s growing insecurity[vi] is confirmation that the post-Bonn political/legal order in Afghanistan did not become inclusive and has not earned the undivided loyalty of the Afghan population. The recent election has only added to that failure.

The international community’s prevailing response to that failure has not included new political/diplomatic efforts to rebuild a basic national consensus behind its public institutions; instead, the focus has been on militarily defeating those outside the consensus. But the resort to war, as Gen. McChrystal confirms with considerable force, has neither defeated the opposition nor delivered the expected modicum of security. Enduring and fundamental conflict, along with pervasive distrust, has over time transmuted into a conventional wisdom, resignation, that the war is failing badly and that the options are getting worse.

William R. Polk, a prominent American academic and advisor to Democratic Presidents, has written an open letter to President Obama pointing out that when foreign forces exit a counterinsurgency war, “almost always, those who fought hardest against the foreigner take over when he leaves.”[vii] The longer the effort to defeat an entrenched insurgency by sheer force, even when force is supplemented by enlightened hearts-and-minds counterinsurgency tactics, the more difficult it is to find a moderate middle ground.

There have certainly been reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan, but most are more properly described as cooption efforts – essentially attempts to entice moderate Taliban to switch sides. These efforts are designed to support the basic military effort, not to replace it. And those efforts at high-level negotiation that have been tried, like those hosted by the Saudis,[viii] have not enjoyed the committed support, political and material, of the international community.

Negotiations will come, because that is how the vast majority of insurgencies end. And the basic objectives of those negotiations will necessarily have to remain modest; that is, to end the fighting over state control and for whatever influence and benefit control over Kabul affords. The objective in Afghanistan, not unlike in Canada, is not to find enduring political harmony. Like Canada, Afghanistan is a place of enormous regional, geographic, and ethnic diversity in which political consensus will always be elusive – at best, cobbled together through informal, temporary, and often issue-specific coalitions. That means the objective is to rebuild institutions and power-sharing arrangements capable of mediating, without resort to violence, the myriad of political conflicts that are endemic to contemporary states.

By now all the major contenders in the Afghanistan war should be convinced, if the truth be told, that it is a war they “can’t win, won’t lose, can’t quit, and can’t afford.”[ix] If and when that reality sinks in, the point of the ensuing negotiations will be the limited objective of a ceasefire to open the way to further negotiations and reconciliation processes to address regional security concerns, to promote inter-communal reconciliation and power sharing at the national level, to set public parameters for respect for basic rights, and to develop ongoing support for peacebuilding efforts at the local level.

It is not a matter of negotiating with one monolithic Taliban. The insurgency has multiple strands. And while reconciliation must ultimately be Afghan-led, it will not necessarily be Afghan Government-led. The time has come for such efforts to garner as much international support and encouragement as is now reserved for assistance to military and police forces.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] Jeffrey Simpson, “Despite our setbacks, all quiet on the Afghan front,” Globe and Mail, 7 October 2009. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/despite-our-setbacks-all-quiet-on-the-afghan-front/article1314266/.

[ii] “Commander’s Initial Assessment,” 30 August 2009. Commander, NATO International Security Assistance Force, Afghanistan, and US Forces, Afghanistan. Available at http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf.

[iii] Originally approved by UN Security Council Resolution 1386 (2001).http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N01/708/55/PDF/N0170855.pdf?OpenElement.

[iv] Michael Semple, Reconciliation in Afghanistan, United States Institute of Peace Press, 2009, p. 89.

[v] Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos (Viking, 2008), p. 217.

[vi] Among many accounts of this growing insecurity is the most recent report of the UN Secretary-General, “The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security,” 22 September 2009 (A/64/364-S/2009/475).  http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N09/515/77/PDF/N0951577.pdf?OpenElement.

[vii] William R. Polk, “An Open Letter to President Obama.” The Nation, 19 October 2009.http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091019/polk.

[viii] Pakistani journalist Amir Mir, “Saudi peace initiative for a Taliban-Karzai truce fruitless so far, Middle East Transparent, 22 December 2008. http://www.metransparent.com/spip.php?page=article&id_article=5046&lang=en.

[ix] This felicitous phrase, or close to it, was offered by A.J.R. Groom of the University of Kent, not in the context of Afghanistan, in a recent public lecture at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. A related paper, “Roadmaps after the ‘peace’,” was first published in Milica Delevic Djilas and Vladimir Deric (eds), The International and the National, Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, Belgrade, 2003,