Armed Conflict
Posted on: February 7th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
A sharp increase in war deaths in Afghanistan during 2010 again confirms the incalculable human cost of war. It’s also an occasion to acknowledge a debt to those who try to count the victims – in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the more than two dozen other wars – and to offer at least some minimal public recognition of loss.
The Kabul based Afghanistan Rights Monitor has just issued a new report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan, showing 2010 to have been the deadliest year yet, with at least 2,421 Afghan civilians killed.[i]
That trend was confirmed by the UN late last year. “Civilians continued to bear the brunt of intensified armed conflict,” according to the Secretary-General in his most recent report. There were 2,412 civilian deaths recorded by the UN in the first 10 months of 2010, a 20 percent increase over the same period in 2009.[ii]
On average, civilian deaths make up almost 50 percent of all Afghan combat deaths, according to numbers collated from multiple sources at Unknown News.[iii] In Iraq the numbers cover a much wider range, from about 100,000 violent deaths recorded at Iraq Body Count[iv] to the 800,000 range in a widely quoted, and debated, study reported in the British medical journal The Lancet in October 2006.[v]
The broad variation in numbers obviously indicates that counting war deaths is an imprecise enterprise. Most studies of direct combat or violent deaths rely on public reports of violent incidents, but such reports are far from systematic. In the 2009 reports on casualties in the fighting that climaxed in Sri Lanka ranged from 7,000 to 40,000 combat deaths that year. And it is at least intuitively obvious that many clashes and deaths that occur in remote places are never reported.
Epidemiological surveys do not count individual deaths through incident reports but measure excess deaths in war by comparing pre-conflict mortality rates with mortality rates during and after conflict as well as population surveys in order to estimate direct deaths by combat and indirect deaths due to war.
However difficult it is to measure war deaths, the victims are owed at least that much. After September 11, 2001, the New York Times ran photographs and personal accounts of all the victims, at least momentarily rescuing all those who had died from anonymity, putting a face on the statistic and giving public acknowledgment to loss. To similarly honour all those who die due to current wars (direct deaths by violence and indirect deaths due to the deprivations of war) would require upwards of 1,000 photos and brief biographies each and every day.
Most victims of contemporary wars will never be featured in the New York Times. Their loss will be felt by those closest to them, but they should also be publicly acknowledged, counted, in the name of public recognition and accountability.
The 2008 report on the Global Burden of Armed Violence (GBAV)[vi] tried to do just that and put the average annual death toll from armed combat, actual combat deaths (combatants and civilians), at 52,000, or 1,000 per week. That figure is roughly confirmed by the informal count maintained by Project Ploughshares[vii] (Ploughshares does not publish combat death figures due to the fact that it is impossible to be comprehensive, nevertheless it maintains tabulations from public sources in order to give a broad assessment of the severity of each conflict). Ploughshares’ unpublished figures from 2006 through 2009 also indicated about 45,000 to 50,000 direct war deaths per year.
These are no doubt conservative estimates. The GBAV report, in reviewing epidemiological surveys done in the DRC, concludes that combat deaths there alone could be averaging 50,000 per year. If extraordinary events like the genocide in Rwanda and the invasion of Iraq are taken into annual averages, the numbers are much, much higher.
It is therefore likely that the global estimate of an average of 1,000 war combat deaths per week is a low estimate, but even at that it is only about one-quarter of the total annual death toll due to war. That estimate is also at the conservative end of the scale inasmuch as the GBAV report, while indicating that some 200,000 people die annually due to the extraordinarily harsh conditions of war, also notes that surveys in the DRC, where people in the fighting zones are subjected to the most heinous of conditions, estimate that it is more likely that about 400,000 people have died each year in recent years due to war.
The Canadian Human Security Report disputes the latter figures. It doesn’t dispute the high mortality rates in the DRC, [viii] but it says that the pre-conflict mortality rate was already high so that it is not possible to say that the current abnormally high mortality rate is war-related.[ix]
What of course is widely agreed is that wars are extraordinarily costly, and that the human cost of war is not found in deaths alone. To them must be added the consequences for the survivors. There are the injured, many of whom suffer lifelong physical disabilities and psychological scars. War displaces people from their homes – in southern Sudan the majority of the population was internally displaced. Indeed, prior to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement with southern Sudan it was the deliberate strategy of the government of Sudan to bomb villages and IDP camps for the purpose of inducing people to flee – to keep the population unhinged and dependent on international assistance.
The relatively low level of direct combat deaths (compared with the high levels of indirect deaths) reflects the nature of most contemporary wars. The objective, with the obvious and tragic exception of Rwanda, is not to maximize the number of deaths but to maximize the level of terror and social upheaval. That is accomplished even by relatively low levels of combat deaths, as well as through the forced displacement of people. The UN reports that at the end of 2009 there were 43.3 million people that had been forcibly displaced, as refugees and internally displaced, due to conflict – the highest number since the 1990s. More than a million people were newly displaced during the course of 2009.[x] The top source countries are the scenes of the world’s most prominent wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, DRC, Myanmar, Colombia, and Sudan. For example, in late October, fierce factional fighting in Somalia near the border with Kenya forced an estimated 60,000 people from their homes in a matter of a few days.[xi]
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eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] ARM Annual Report: Civilian Casualties of War, January-December 2010. Afghanistan Rights Monitor, Kabul, Afghanistan. February 2011. http://www.arm.org.af/.
[ii] “The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security: Report of the Secretary-General, UN Security Council, 10 December 2010 (A/65/612–S/2010/630), para 55. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N10/667/78/PDF/N1066778.pdf?OpenElement.
[iii] http://www.unknownnews.org/casualties.html.
[iv] http://www.iraqbodycount.org/.
[v] Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, Les Roberts, “Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey.” www.thelancet.com Published online October 11, 2006 DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)69491-9. http://www.brussellstribunal.org/pdf/lancet111006.pdf.
[vi] Global Burden of Armed Violence, a detailed study of armed violence in all its form, is a 2008 publication of the “Geneva Declaration.” The Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development is a diplomatic initiative by more than 100 countries aimed at addressing the interrelations between armed violence and development. http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadmin/docs/Global-Burden-of-Armed-Violence-full-report.pdf.
[vii] Armed Conflicts Report 2010. http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-TitlePage.html.
[viii] The Canadian Human Security Report undertakes a detailed analysis of war death toll estimates in the DRC and questions the reliability of the data and methodology used in some studies. Accordingly the Human Security Report concludes that the number of deaths attributed to war have been significantly overstated. That the death toll in the DRC is extraordinarily high is not disputed; rather the point is that the pre-war death rate was already much higher than the African average, so it is not appropriate to describe the current high rate of death as being a consequence of war. Human Security Report 2009, “Shrinking Costs of War,” The Human Security Report Project (an independent centre at Simon Fraser University), Chapter 3: The Death Toll in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. http://www.hsrgroup.org/docs/Publications/HSR2009/2009HumanSecurityReport_Pt2_3_DeathTollDemocraticRepublicCongo.pdf
[ix] The Canadian Human Security Report says of the GBAV estimates: “More recently, the wide-ranging Global Burden of Armed Violence report published by the Geneva Declaration Secretariat estimated that for every person who died violently in wars around the world between 2004 and 2007, another four died from war-exacerbated disease and malnutrition. 4The report did not claim there was a consistent ratio between the two, simply that on average, the indirect-to-direct war death ratio was 4:1. This ratio is certainly not implausible, but the evidence base used to calculate it is far too narrow and uncertain to place any confidence in its accuracy.” Human Security Report 2009, “Shrinking Costs of War,” The Human Security Report Project (an independent centre at Simon Fraser University), Chapter 1, “Deadly Connections: Wartime Violence and Indirect Deaths.” http://www.hsrgroup.org/docs/Publications/HSR2009/2009HumanSecurityReport_Pt2_1_DeadlyConnectionsWartimeViolenceIndirectDeaths.pdf
[x] “2009 Global Trends: Refugees, Asylum-seekers, Returnees, Internally Displaced and Stateless Persons,” UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency), 15 June 2010. http://www.unhcr.org/4c11f0be9.html.
[xi] “Tens of thousands displaced by clashes in Somalia,” UNHCR news release, 26 October 2010. http://www.unhcr.org/print/4cc6f6d29.html.
Posted on: January 6th, 2011 by Ernie Regehr
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect warns that “an escalation in the situation [in Côte d’Ivoire] could easily lead to the commission of mass atrocities….”[i] Protection is far from guaranteed, but the international effort to date is serious.
All the ingredients for long-term strife punctuated by explosive violence are in abundant supply in the Ivory Coast: north-south regionalism that reflects an economic divide, ethnic conflict, a north-south Muslim/Christian divide, xenophobia borne out of a history of illegal immigration, and most recently of course a contested presidential election in which each of the final two contestants has access to partisan armed forces.
The current crisis, in which the descent into major fighting has thus far been avoided, has already imposed huge costs on the people of a country still trying to recover from the last civil war. The UN reports that violence has claimed the lives of nearly 200 people and investigators have found evidence of extrajudicial executions, torture and arrests.[ii] A week ago NGOs working in northeastern Liberia estimated that some 30,000 refugees had arrived from Côte d’Ivoire, many of whom were “reporting widespread violence and intimidation from both Ivoirian government troops and soldiers from the former rebel Forces Nouvelles operating in the west.”[iii] In the midst of deeply entrenched poverty, the crisis is putting food prices on the rise – doubling in some cases.[iv] The public unrest and political chaos are currently blocking a nationwide vaccination drive against yellow fever.[v]
A National Post columnist, in another run at the failures of the UN, complained that “once again the UN finds itself with a problem that has no apparent solution”[vi] – but that is exactly where the most intractable problems are taken. The UN and the international community are indeed already deeply involved in the crisis: through the presence of UN peacekeeping forces, a succession of Security Council resolutions, the African Union,[vii] the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),[viii] and most especially a declared commitment to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, when their own governments fail to do so.
Protection from that list of crimes means preventing them, which is the point emphasized by Francis Deng and Edward Luck, special Advisers to the Secretary-General respectively on the prevention of genocide and the responsibility to protect. In a public statement on the crisis in Ivory Coast they said the protection responsibility “entails the prevention of those crimes, importantly including their incitement,” and they warned all the involved parties “that they are accountable for their actions under international law.”[ix]
The UN Security Council similarly reminded Ivorian leaders that they “bear primary responsibility for ensuring peace and protecting the civilian population” and called on the UN peacekeeping forces to assist local authorities in that mission and to “implement [their] protection of civilian mandate.”[x]
There is inevitably reluctance to formally invoke the “responsibility to protect” (R2P), not least because it is taken by some as code for military intervention. The UK Independent newspaper launched a pre-emptive headline against military action with the declaration that “the last thing Ivorians need is an invasion”[xi] – which is a sentiment that could be appropriately applied to all states virtually all the time, but which offers rather slight help in sorting out the means by which the international community might best act on its R2P obligations.
To date, it is worth noting, the international community has been pursuing its responsibility cautiously but seriously in the spirit of the R2P doctrine approved by the UN in 2005.
International intervention or assistance is already partly military, inasmuch as UN peacekeeping force of over 9,000 international military and police personnel are already deployed there through the UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoir (UNOCI),[xii] including a few hundred seconded from UNMIL in Liberia. More may be added, but the primary focus is on the diplomacy envisioned under Chapter VI and non-military coercion under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
In Chapter VI diplomacy the international community has been united in calling for the election results to be respected, for President Laurent Gbagbo (a southerner) to step down, and for election winner Alassane Quattara (a northerner) to assume that role. Measures under Chapter VII include a military embargo, a ban on diamond exports, frozen bank accounts and other assets, and travel bans against key individuals.
Louise Arbour of the International Crisis Group reflects the general wariness of the international community when she says “a military solution to the crisis in Côte d”Ivoir is unlikely.”[xiii] ECOWAS and the AU have clearly put military intervention, beyond the UN forces already there, on the table, but neither is keen, or has the ready means, to go that route. So, for now, we are seeing R2P in a prevention mode in Ivory Coast, along the lines envisioned by the framers of the 2005 R2P commitment.
The outcome is far from certain, and it is an uncertainty that holds the well-being of millions of people in the balance.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
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[i] “Open Statement on the Situation in Côte d’Ivoire,” Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, 17 December 2010. www.globalr2p.org.
[ii] BBC News, 28 December 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11916590.
[iii] “Back to square one?”, IRIN, 30 December 2010. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=91496.
[iv] “Political impasse sparks food price hikes,” IRIN, 28 December 2010. http://www.irinnews.org/PrintReport.aspx?ReportID=91472.
[v] “Chaos blocks yellow fever vaccination drive,” IRIN, 5 January 2011. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=91530.
[vi] Kelly McParland, “The UNs dilemma in Ivory Coast,” National Post, 2 January 2011. http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/02/kelly-mcparland-the-uns-dilemma-in-ivory-coast/.
[vii] Communique, African Union, 9 December 2010. http://www.africa-union.org/root/au/index/index.htm.
[viii] Extraordinary Session of the Authority of Heads of State and Government on Cote D’Ivoir, 24 December 2010. http://www.africa-union.org/root/au/Conferences/2010/december/situation/Final%20Communique_Eng.pdf.
[ix] “UN Secretary-General’s Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect on the situation in Côte d’Ivoire,” United Nations press release, 29 December 2010. http://unclef.com/preventgenocide/adviser/pdf/Special%20Advisers’%20Statement%20on%20Cote%20d’Ivoire,%2029%20.12.2010.pdf.
[x] Resolution 1962, United Nations Security Council, 20 December 2010 [S/RES/1962 (2010)]. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N10/702/17/PDF/N1070217.pdf?OpenElement.
[xi] Adrian Hamilton, “The last thing Ivorians need is an invasion,” The Independent, 30 December 2010. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/adrian-hamilton/adrian-hamilton-the-last-thing-ivorians-need-is-an-invasion-2171654.html.
[xii] Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2010, A Project of the Center on International Cooperation (Lynne Reinner Publishers, Boulder and London, 2010), pp. 89-94.
[xiii] Louise Arbour, “Open Letter to the United Nations Security Council on the Situation in Côte d’Ivoir. 20 December 2010. http://www.crisisgroup.org.
Posted on: December 29th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
From the earliest days of the current, and by all accounts undiminished, insurgency in Afghanistan, conventional wisdom has regarded Pakistan as a key, if not the key, to Afghan stability. But for Pakistan to become a part of the solution in Afghanistan, India will have to be recognized as part of the problem.
The recent White House review of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan[i] does not deviate from the conventional wisdom. Pakistan is once again declared to be central to US-ISAF[ii] counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan. At the same time a recently leaked intelligence estimate,[iii] also to no one’s surprise, reports that the Government of Pakistan remains unwilling to end its covert support for the Afghan Taliban and thus for ongoing instability.
Conventional wisdom isn’t wrong because it’s the convention, so it is hardly surprising that there are those who seek an escalation of US military operations in Pakistan,[iv] beyond the current drone war and operations by CIA-backed militias. Others find it more compelling to address what is behind Pakistan’s apparent determination to continue fomenting instability in Afghanistan.[v]
One of those more sober voices was that of the late Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to the region. Not long before his death he told Time Magazine writer Joe Kline that “the conflict [in Afghanistan] would only be resolved diplomatically, that equilibrium could only be reached in Afghanistan if the Pakistanis and Indians established better relations, and stopped seeing Afghanistan as a strategic prize.” Klein describes Holbrooke as “frustrated by the inability of all the regional players to understand that peace was in their best long-term interests (especially the Pakistanis, whose obsession with military matters–and paranoia about India–was crippling their ability to build the buoyant economy necessary for a stable state).”[vi]
In other words, justified or not, rational or not, Pakistan’s obsession with India – and vice versa – cannot help but be played out in Afghanistan. As the Carnegie Endowment’s Jessica Mathews recently reminded a forum on Afghanistan, “Pakistan’s principal strategic worry is not Afghanistan. It’s India.”[vii]
That does not need to imply that peace in Afghanistan must await the establishment of sweet harmony between India and Pakistan. Such a peace is obviously not imminent, but it is realistic, make that necessary, to work more effectively toward insulating the Afghan national conflict from surrounding regional conflicts and competition.
As Holbrooke suggested, the issue is not to first build Pakistani/Indian peace, rather it is to help both understand that to make Afghanistan an arena for their enduring conflict serves the interests of neither of them. Patrick Doherty of the New America Foundation calls for a three-track diplomacy effort on Afghanistan: “talks with the Taliban groups, talks with the neighbours, and talks among all Afghan parties. Some efforts are already under way, but none is backed by a serious commitment from the key players: the Afghan government, the United States, Pakistan, India, Iran and China.[viii]
Reports that President Barack Obama used his recent meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh[ix] to appeal for a more constructive regional approach on Afghanistan are encouraging, as is Canada’s decision to include regional diplomacy as one of its four priorities for the next stage of Canadian involvement in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s involvements in Afghanistan are multi-dimensional, but it is unlikely to end its destabilization tactics as long as it fears that a stable Afghanistan will be aligned to India. Pakistan has a history, as US General David Petraeus also noted recently, of supporting non-state extremist groups as a hedge in its rivalry with India.[x]
And destabilization in Afghanistan, a country brimming with both grievances and weapons, is and will continue to be easy to foment. Pakistan will continue to have no difficulty finding political/military aspirants in Afghanistan ready to accept “help” and to undermine any government in Kabul that is potentially hostile or unfriendly to Pakistan. No military operation will be able to prevent it as long as Pakistan regards an unstable Afghanistan to be more in its interests than would be a stable Afghanistan with strong links to India.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
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[i] “Overview of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review,” The White House, 16 December 2010. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/16/overview-afghanistan-and-pakistan-annual-review,
[ii] International Security Assistance Force.
[iii] Ken Dilanian and David S. Cloud, “U.S. intelligence reports cast doubt on war progress in Afghanistan,” Los Angeles Times, 15 December 2010. http://articles.latimes.com/print/2010/dec/15/world/la-fg-afghan-review-20101215.
[iv] Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins, “U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan,” The New York Times, 20 December 2010.
[v] Nicole Waintraub, “India-Pakistan relations and the impact on Afghanistan,” The Ploughshares Monitor, Winter 2010, p. 13-15. http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/pdf2010winter.pdf.
[vi] Joe Klein, “Holbrooke’s Last Words, Take Three,” Time Magazine Blog, 14 December 2010. http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/12/14/holbrookes-last-words-take-three/.
[vii] Jessica Tuchman Mathews, “Afghanistan Strategy Review,” The Diane Rehm Show, 15 December 2010. http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=42146#.
[viii] Patrick Doherty, “Rethink ‘fight then talk’ in Afghanistan,” New America Foundation, Special to CNN, 16 December 2010. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/16/doherty.afghan.strategy/index.html.
[ix] Haroon Siddiqui, “Obama plays Indian wild card on Afghanistan,” The Toronto Star, 19 December 2010. http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/909121–siddiqui-obama-plays-indian-wild-card-on-afghanistan.
[x] “Mullen: Taliban Hideouts Can Be Shut Down,” Associated Press, 17 December 2010. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=132086633.
Posted on: December 19th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
“You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” These are said to have been the last words of US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke.[i] He didn’t say how to do it, but he left behind enough other words to make clear his view that the focus of his country’s efforts would have to shift from fighting to talking.
In a tribute to Holbrooke, Canada’s Chris Alexander, who offered extraordinary service in Afghanistan, both as Canada’s Ambassador and as Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, called his passing “a tragedy for Afghanistan.” Interestingly, Alexander then went on to say, in The Globe and Mail, that Holbrooke “had seen enough to know that reconciliation could never involve the appeasement of terrorists with little to lose, now bent on wrecking both the Afghan and the Pakistani states.”[ii]
There is little doubt that Holbrooke did not favour an appeasement strategy, indeed it’s hard to imagine that anyone might, given the World War II etymology of that term, but, intended or not, Alexander’s account of Holbrooke’s rejection of appeasement should not be taken as evidence that Holbrooke also rejected negotiations or diplomatic engagement with the Taliban and other elements of the Afghan insurgency.
Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars,[iii] portrays Holbrook as having joined Vice President Joe Biden in opposing escalation of the war through a military surge (Location 2968).[iv] While he didn’t then see the way open to high-level treaty or cease-fire talks with the top Taliban leadership, he expressed frustration with much of the background briefing that failed to acknowledge a central truth — namely that America would not produce a military victory in Afghanistan (L2963).
The recent White House review of US strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan,[v] as well as President Barack Obama’s accompanying statement,[vi] once again makes clear that the defeat of the Taliban is not the objective. Instead, President Obama has defined the core objective as defeating al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and as preventing it from threatening the US or others from that base.
Indeed, it can be credibly argued that the Taliban and their Pashtun base are central to keeping al Qaeda out of Afghanistan in the future. In the long run, only the Pashtun community can ensure that al Qaeda is not harboured in its midst.
And, according to Woodward, Holbrooke understood that keeping al Qaeda out of Afghanistan did not require that the Taliban also be kept out of Afghanistan. He agreed with Vice President Biden that “even if the Taliban retook large parts of Afghanistan, al Qaeda would not come with them” – it was a conclusion that, Holbrooke remarked, might have been “the single most important intellectual insight of the year” (L2970).
The question thus becomes not whether the Taliban return to governance in some form in some parts of Afghanistan, but how that return is to be managed so as to preserve hard won constitutional and practical gains in human rights, especially the rights of women and access to education for females. Holbrooke may not have answered that challenge directly, but he was on a promising track when he urged that much more emphasis be placed on good governance at provincial and district levels, instead of focusing only on Karzai and Kabul (L4094).
As difficult and irascible as Holbrook apparently sometimes was, by all accounts he would have continued to be a major asset in pursuit of the goal that was his final command – “you’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”
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Notes
[i] “Richard Holbrooke’s last words: ‘You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan’,” The Telegraph, United Kingdom, 14 December 2010. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8201988/Richard-Holbrookes-last-words-Youve-got-to-stop-this-war-in-Afghanistan.html.
[ii] Christopher Alexander, “Afghanistan: A critical task Holbrooke would want us to finish …,” 15 December 2010 (Former Deputy Special Representative to the UN Secretary General in Afghanistan and formerly Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan).
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/afghanistan-a-critical-task-holbrooke-would-want-us-to-finish/article1838231/
[iii] Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars, Kindle Edition.
[iv] Instead of page numbers, these references are to Location numbers in the Kindle edition.
[v] “Overview of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review,” The White House, 16 December 2010. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/16/overview-afghanistan-and-pakistan-annual-review,
[vi] President Barack Obama, Statement by the President on the Afghanistan-Pakistan Annual Review, 16 December 2010, The White House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/16/statement-president-afghanistan-pakistan-annual-review.
Posted on: November 12th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
In an enviable display of political maturity, Afghans express overwhelming support for negotiations with insurgent groups, even as public sympathy for the insurgents and their aims and methods is in significant decline.
This is one conclusion to be drawn from the 2010 survey of Afghans conducted by The Asia Foundation.[1] The survey addresses, as it does annually, a broad range of issues; the findings on attitudes towards reconciliation and negotiations are especially timely in the context of recently reported speculations about political initiatives.
The survey found that “83 per cent of respondents support the government’s attempts to address the security situation through negotiation and reconciliation with armed anti-government elements.” A year ago that support stood at 71 per cent.
While support for negotiations increased by more than 10 percentage points, the level of sympathy for the insurgents with whom negotiations and reconciliation are sought dropped by 16 percentage points. The level of “sympathy with the motivations of armed opposition groups” fell from 56 per cent in 2009 to 40 per cent in 2010. The majority of the 2010 respondents (55 per cent) say they have no sympathy at all for armed opposition groups, a significant increase over 2009 when only 36 per cent they had no sympathy for insurgents.
A population that is losing sympathy for the Taliban is increasingly interested in negotiating with them. Thus, almost three quarters of all respondents (73 per cent) think that “the government’s reconciliation efforts will help stabilize the country.”
All of this suggests that Afghans are comfortable with the notion that the pursuit of peace requires that you talk with your adversaries – those with whom you have the deepest, most fundamental differences.
Not surprisingly, support for negotiations is highest in those areas where respondents are most like to declare that they have “some level of sympathy with the motivations of armed opposition groups” – and that sympathy is highest in the South West (where 52 per cent), the South East (50 per cent), and the West (50 per cent). Support for negotiation and reconciliation is thus highest in the East (89 per cnt), South East (85 per cent) and North West (85 per cent). Support for negotiations is lower in the Central/Hazarajat region (78 per cent), but is obviously still very high.
Reintegration efforts also enjoy broad support – that is, 81 per cent agree with programs that offer government assistance, including the provision of jobs and housing, to those insurgents who lay down arms and want to reintegrate into society. That is up from 71 per cent in 2009.
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The survey also indicates that the high level of support for negotiations does not imply any acquiescence to the limits on personal and public freedoms that are broadly associated with insurgent aims. Support for talks is matched by 81 per cent support for “the democratic principle of equal rights for all groups to participation and representation.” Support for “allowing peaceful opposition” stands at 83 percent.
A variety of gender-related issues were also addressed in the survey. It found, for example, that 87 per cent of respondents say they agree that women should have the same opportunities as men in education. The survey reports that 81 per cent of Afghans support equal rights under the law, regardless of gender, ethnicity or religion.
Support for negotiations, therefore, is not evidence of diminishing support for the freedoms that Government and international military forces say they are fighting for; instead, it is fair to say that Afghans simultaneously reject the Taliban, value freedom and equality, and favour negotiations.
It seems Afghans have the idea that prospects for achieving freedom and equality, and peace, are better at the negotiating table than on the battlefield.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[1] “Afghanistan in 2010: A Survey of the Afghan People,” Key Findings, The Asia Foundation. http://asiafoundation.org/country/afghanistan/2010-poll.php
Posted on: November 1st, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is said to be planning to set out his Government’s plans for the post-2011 Afghanistan Mission in advance of the Summit Meeting of NATO Heads of State and Government in Lisbon on 19-20 November 2010.[i]
The context for setting future priorities for Canada’s Afghan mission is not only Canada’s impending military withdrawal, it is also the admission, made almost two years ago by Mr. Harper, that the war in Afghanistan will not lead to the defeat of the insurgency.[ii] More recently, Richard Holbrook, the US special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the same,[iii] as have many others.
That means that the objective of the current military surge is not to defeat the insurgency, but to set it back on its heels. A stalled insurgency, the reasoning goes, would create more favorable conditions for weaning fighters away from the insurgency (reintegration[iv]) and for inducing their leaders to seek negotiations with the Government of Afghanistan and its international partners to end the war (reconciliation[v]).
Not all agree it is a workable strategy. Matt Waldman, formerly of Oxfam in Afghanistan, writes in a US Institute for Peace briefing that “field research indicates that the coalition’s military surge is intensifying the conflict, and compounding enmity and mistrust between the parties. It is therefore reducing the prospects of negotiations, which require confidence-building measures that should be incremental, structured and reciprocal.”[vi]
The implication is that the priority now should be to upgrade diplomacy and to focus on improved governance, services, and reconstruction measures, especially in those areas of the country where the insurgency is not a strongly debilitating presence. In other words, programs and activities that build confidence in a stable future, rather than intensified fighting, are what is needed to set the stage for the serious pursuit of a political settlement. The years of military effort to downgrade the Taliban have parallelled the insurgency’s steady ascent. So much so, says Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani author, journalist, and expert on the entire region, that the Taliban are now a nationwide movement.[vii]
The debate about the impact of the “surge” will not be quickly resolved – for example, the New York Times has run prominent stories of new success in routing the Taliban[viii] — but Ahmed Rashid goes on to say that despite the significant advances and spread of the insurgency, the Taliban may have hit both a military and political wall: “Taliban leaders may also realize that they are now at their apogee. They are a nationwide guerilla insurgency, but they cannot take or control major population centres given NATO’s firepower. There is no populist insurrection they can lead against US forces as there was in Iraq – the majority of Afghans do not want the return of a Taliban regime.”[ix]
If this analysis is correct, Afghanistan fits the classic “hurting stalemate.” The Government of Afghanistan and its international partners, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) cannot defeat the Taliban and the Taliban cannot defeat the Government and its international security backers. It’s a stalemate that is politically and economically hurting both sides and calls out for a political solution.
That, in fact, is the central reality that should guide those planning Canadian policy for Afghanistan after 2011.
In August a leaked Government draft[x] proposed that after 2011 Canada focus on four priorities (down from the current six):
• Securing a future for Afghan children and youth,
• promoting regional diplomacy,
• advancing the rule of law and human rights, and
• delivering humanitarian assistance.
All are worthy and urgent. The reconciliation priority would, in this approach, focus on regional diplomacy – also very important and essential to future stability.
But the political way out of the currently stalemated war has a chance of being stable and durable only if that political process is transparent, inclusive of Afghans from all sectors of society, and respectful of the civil and human rights that are acknowledged around the world as basic to stable governance and the safety and well-being of people. Any such political process must be Afghan led, as Ottawa has rightly insisted, but Canada and the international community have an important role to play in encouraging a constructive and inclusive process.
So how should Canada shape its post-2011 mission in Afghanistan?
In the first instance, as a country that has invested heavily in the future of Afghanistan and has acknowledged at the highest level that the war is not winnable and that diplomacy is required, Canada needs to find a public voice to actively encourage pursuit of a transparent and inclusive reconciliation process.
Second, an important way for Canada to engage more directly in support of reconciliation efforts would be for the Foreign Minister to appoint a special diplomatic envoy on Afghanistan.[xi] In addition to monitoring and supporting regional diplomacy, part of the mandate of the envoy should be to encourage the Government of Afghanistan, as well as civil society, to develop mechanisms for an inclusive and consultative approach (Canada has used special envoys in other contexts, for example in Sudan during the negotiations toward the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to monitor and observe talks and work with an international Friends of Sudan Group).
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Third, given that Afghan civil society has already emphasized that for the people of Afghanistan to have confidence in a reconciliation process it must be transparent as well as inclusive, Canada should pledge financial support for building up the institutional capacity of Afghan civil society to engage actively in any forthcoming peace process. For civil society to be an effective participant it must have the organizational capacity to monitor the reconciliation process, to hold public forums and consultations, and to generally give leadership to citizen involvement in a process that will forge a new future for their country. That capacity can obviously be aided by financial support and international partnerships and Canada should make both a focus of its support.
And finally, community-level reconciliation, reintegration, and confidence building throughout the country are important, both to address local conflicts and concerns and to generate local support for and input into a national process. Canadian financial support for Afghan and international organizations that bolster local governance mechanisms, peacebuilding, and dialogue, and that have a capacity to work with traditional and informal authorities at local and district levels, should be part of our support for the reconciliation process. Ownership and leadership are not confined to national structures. Recognition of the traditions and advantages of decentralized governance in Afghanistan, along with the significant potential for local and informal authorities to serve as vehicles for conciliation, is part of the process of encouraging Afghan ownership of any reconciliation processes.
Canada is not positioned to play a decisive role in the move towards talking and reconciliation in Afghanistan, but we can most certainly play an important supportive role. And that support should be an increasing, indeed central, part of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan going forward.
eregehr@uwaterloo.ca
Notes
[i] Murray Brewster, “Afghan counterterror role might fly with war-weary Canadians: Diplomat,” Toronto Star.com, Canadian Press, 31 October 2010.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/883785–SOMNIA.
[ii] 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.
[iii] CNN, Afghanistan Blog, 25 October 2010. http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/25/holbrooke-nothing-close-to-formal-peace-talks/.
[iv] In the Afghan context, reintegration is understood, not as a post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding enterprise, but as a tactical counterinsurgency initiative. It is pursued as a war-time effort to persuade rank-and-file insurgents to quit fighting and lay down their arms in exchange for promises of personal safety, immunity, employment, and other financial incentives. A recent US Congressional Research Service report puts it rather directly: the focus is on the “reintegration of fighters amenable to surrendering.”Kenneth Katzman, Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy, The United States Congressional Research Service, 21 July 2010. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL30588.pdf.
[v] In the Afghan context, reconciliation is diplomacy that seeks to engage insurgency leaders in pursuit of a political settlement that will end the fighting.
[vi] Matt Waldman, Navigating Negotiations in Afghanistan, USIP PeaceBrief 52, 13 September 2010. http://www.usip.org/publications/navigating-negotiations-in-afghanistan.
[vii] Ahmed Rashid, “Meeting the mullahs takes more than meets the eye,” The Globe and Mail, 22 October 2010. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/meeting-the-mullahs-takes-more-than-meets-the-eye/article1769959/.
[viii] Carlotta Gall, “Coalition Forces Routing Taliban in Key Afghan Region,” The New York Times, 20 October 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/world/asia/21kandahar.html.
[ix] Ahmed Rashid, “Meeting the mullahs takes more than meets the eye.”
[x] Steven Chase, “Ottawa maps out post-combat role in Afghanistan,” The Globe and Mail, 24 August 2010. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-maps-out-post-combat-role-in-afghanistan/article1682861/.
[xi] The Liberal Opposition encouraged the Government to use the occasion of the January 2010 London Conference to announce the appointment of a Canadian special envoy to lead Canadian efforts related to governance and reconciliation and, more broadly, Canada’s post-2011 involvement in Afghanistan. “Liberals call for special envoy to Afghanistan,” http://www.liberal.ca/newsroom/news-release/liberals-call-for-special-envoy-to-afghanistan/.
Posted on: July 8th, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
The coming months will no doubt bring some extravagant pleas from certain Afghan and NATO politicians that Canada not follow through on the commitment to withdraw its combat forces from Afghanistan in 2011, but an effective antidote to such pressures is available in beefed-up diplomacy.
“You have to finish the job,” says Ahmad Wali Karzai – head of the Kandahar provincial council, half brother to President Hamid Karzai, controversial politician, entrepreneur with rumored links to the drug trade, and survivor of at least one assassination attempt.
“What we are fighting is not only the enemy of Afghanistan. This is the enemy of the world. This is the enemy of every human being so don’t leave us alone,” Wali Karzai told a Canadian journalist. “You have to be committed to what you promised. You cannot leave in the middle and say, ‘I’m packing it in’.” [i] He warns that the Taliban are already claiming victories in the face of planned departures of international troops.[ii]
Canada’s Ambassador William Crosbie, on the other hand, points to other Taliban with a less triumphalist outlook: “I know myself, through our own contacts with Taliban, commanders who want to lay down their arms, and what they say to us through third parties is we’re tired of fighting. ‘We know we can’t win. We want to come back to our families but who’s going to protect us from the other insurgents; who is going to protect us from the Afghan security forces [and] from ISAF?’” [iii]
A widely-respected and clear-thinking realist in the diplomatic community in Afghanistan, Amb Crosbie was speaking of amnesty or reintegration prospects, but he also told the Canadian Press that reconciliation is key to resolving the Afghan conflict. To be sure, he urged caution and the need for diplomacy to meet strict conditions, and in particular he emphasized the importance of process in any talks. A reconciliation or peace process focused only on the Karzai Government and the Taliban leadership is “a recipe for disaster,” he said.
Because it is “process [that] will determine the outcome,” he said, for there to be an outcome that serves the interests, and has the confidence, of all Afghans it must necessarily come out of a process that involves the broad cross-section of Afghans. He told the Canadian Press that a constructive process must:
-be internally inclusive and involve all ethnic groups, as well as women: “It has to be a reconciliation among Afghans to come back to build the future of their country in a way that each ethnic and women’s group feels it respects their interests;”
-involve the international community, especially in winning the cooperation of Afghanistan’s neighbors: “The Afghans are never going to have peace or reconciliation in their country unless the neighbors support the future we’re trying to create.”
-be given time – especially since “the government is in a weak position, particularly in the south”
Canadian NGOs have long been similarly encouraging political dialogue that extends to regional actors, engages all sectors of Afghan society, is thorough or comprehensive enough to convincingly address the full range of grievances, and that is also supported or guided by the UN. Back in 2008, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs recommended that Canada’s efforts in Afghanistan – diplomatic, military, and development – be specifically oriented toward creating “conditions favorable to a peace process.” It asked Canada to make “a concrete commitment to promote…broad-based negotiations,” nationally and in local communities, and to “encourage dialogue among all sectors of Afghan society and all communities of interest, and thereby help to establish conditions conducive to peace negotiations.”[iv]
For Canada to take up that challenge with some renewed energy would be one of the best ways to deflect pressures to continue combat operations.
By now, the main argument against talks with insurgents is one of timing, or “ripeness” – the point at which the parties conclude that they are in a “mutually-hurting stalemate” from which they all want to escape. But because the insurgency is now strong and ascendant, the argument goes, that ripeness will not be present until the insurgents are beaten back through intensified action on the battlefield and more persuasive enticements to individual insurgents to defect.
The Ambassador’s analysis of war weariness among some Taliban, confirmed by separate direct conversations with Afghans close to insurgent communities, suggests the situation is probably not so far from a hurting stalemate, and, in any case, intensified military action is not having the desired effect of downgrading the insurgents. Furthermore, 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, some argue there is no point in talking to an ascendant insurgency because it will be disinclined to compromise; on the other hand, others will be just as insistent there is no need to negotiate or seek compromise with retreating insurgents.
There are also few prospects for large-scale defections through amnesty programs.[v] “Peace cannot come to Afghanistan through the junior Taliban,” says a former Taliban governor who did in fact defect. Peace efforts “will bear no fruit if the Taliban leaders are not involved and listened to…Peace will not come to Afghanistan until you speak to the Taliban leaders and show sincerity,” he said.[vi]
The UN Secretary-General’s 2009 report on mediation also questions the “hurting stalemate” theory, saying it has “turned out to be costly for all concerned, since opportunities for early resolution [are] lost and…stalemate[s] sometimes lead, instead, to intractability.” The Secretary-General says the hurting stalemate “concept has now been reformulated to take into account the role that third parties can play in cultivating and fostering ripeness at an early stage through the introduction of new ideas, skills, resources, and creativity.”[vii]In other words, creating the conditions for constructive negotiations is at least as much a matter of diplomacy as it is of coercion.
What’s needed now is a third party with some of those new ideas and creativity. Waiting is not likely to produce a better outcome. In fact, as has been argued in this space before, there is little evidence to support the idea that delaying the pursuit of talks will produce negotiating advantages for the Government of Afghanistan and its international backers. The opposite is just as likely to happen; the longer talks or the active pursuit of them are delayed the greater the likelihood that powerbrokers on both sides will be drawn to backroom deals to divvy up power among themselves. No one is talking about a quick process – a comprehensive peace process involving all sectors of society in pursuit of enough national consensus to end the fighting is a time consuming enterprise, and it in turn is simply the prelude to a generations long effort to build a reasonably just and participatory society.
eregehr@ploughshares.ca
Notes
[i] Bill Graveland, “‘Don’t leave us alone’; Afghan president’s brother asks Canada to extend mission,” The Toronto Star, 6 July 2010. http://www.thestar.com/printarticle/832775.
[ii] “Taliban rule out peace talks with NATO,” Mail Online, 1 July 2010.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1291080/Taliban-rule-talks-Nato-Why-winning.html.
[iii] “Canadian ambassador worries Taliban talks ‘going too far, going too fast’,” The Globe and Mail, Canadian Press, 05 July 2010. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/canadian-ambassador-worries-taliban-talks-going-too-far-going-too-fast/article1628408/?cmpid=rss1.
[iv] Canada in Afghanistan: Report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development; Chair, Kevin Sorenson, MP (July 2008, 39th Parliament, 2nd Session).
[v] Steve Coll, Interview with National Public Radio, “Should the US try to Negotiate with the Taliban,” 29 June 2010. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128196663.
[vi] Sayed Slahuddin, “Ex-Taliban governor sees little hope for Afghan peace,” Reuters, 6 July 2010.http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKSGE65S0AY._CH_.2420.
[vii] Report of th Secretary-General on enhancing mediation and its support activities, UN Security Council, 8 April 2009 (S/2009/189).
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Posted on: April 21st, 2010 by Ernie Regehr
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.
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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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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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