Armed Conflict

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.

The signs are growing that over the next year there could be an agreement to remove all remaining US nuclear weapons from Europe.

Both the forthcoming US Nuclear Posture Review and the current NATO Strategic Concept Review could set the stage for dispatching at least one Cold War relic — namely, the ongoing positioning of US nuclear gravity bombs in Europe. It is a policy defended till now as confirming US extended nuclear deterrence and cementing the transatlantic security relationship.

Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy provides a very helpful update on the oft-delayed US nuclear posture review – initially it was scheduled for release in late 2009, then early February of 2010, then early March, and now mid to late March. He reports on inside-the-beltway speculation that while “the document will not call for nuclear withdrawal, …it may say it’s up for discussion or even go so far to say that NATO no longer requires nukes in Europe.”[i] He suggests that the US Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review also seems to point in that direction when it refers to the development of new “regional deterrence architectures” that will “make possible a reduced role for nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.”[ii]

At the same time, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Norway are calling for all American warheads in Europe to be returned to the US. Their initiative is pursued within the context of NATO’s review of its strategic doctrine. [iii]

Earlier, under its new Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, had taken up the same call, characterizing it as both a disarmament nonproliferation measure.[iv] The NATO Monitor blog has also reported that Turkey has made it known it “would not insist” that NATO maintain forward deployed nuclear weapons in Europe, and also that Italy would be open to reconsidering NATO’s nuclear posture.[v]

The west European States behind the coming call have emphasized that they are looking for a collective decision in NATO and are not contemplating unilateral action, and, notably, that they do not equate the removal of weapons from Europe with either the “denuclearization of NTAO”  or with an end to US extended deterrence covering Europe.[vi] Their stance essentially follows the model of the US nuclear umbrella over North-East Asia It is a region that is rather less stable than Europe, and yet there are no US nuclear weapons deployed in any states there.[vii] In fact, Japan, while continuing to claim the American nuclear deterrent for itself, insists, through its three nuclear principles,[viii] that no nuclear weapons be on its territory.

The point is obviously not to champion extended nuclear deterrence, but is to recognize that extended deterrence is not a credible argument, or excuse, for the continued physical placement of nuclear weapons in Europe or on the territories of any States claimed under a nuclear umbrella.

Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada wrote to US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton late last year, reasserting the relevance of US extended nuclear deterrence while at the same time welcoming US nuclear arms reductions. He did ask for the US to explain its plans to retire the nuclear armed Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAM/N), which are in storage in the US but nevertheless linked to deterrence in the North-East Asia region. The Arms Control Wonk blog elaborates with its usual detail and verve. It also debunks the myth that if the US fails to maintain its current nuclear arsenal, extended deterrence will be weakened and Japan will be driven to acquire its own nuclear deterrent.^[ix] The Japan Times made the same point in its report in late February that the US had already informed Japan that the Nuclear Posture Review will confirm the retirement of the sea-based TLAM/N – adding that this would not affect the nuclear umbrella.^[x]

Now the obvious question is, where’s Canada in all this? Will Ottawa be championing the new European initiative?

There are currently estimated to be between 150 and 200 nuclear weapons, all US B61 gravity bombs, held in five countries in Europe – Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.[xi] All of the European countries hosting these US nuclear weapons are non-nuclear weapon states parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a fact, it is worth noting, that puts those countries and the US, the nuclear weapon state that owns those bombs, in violation of Articles I and II of the NPT.[xii]

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] Josh Rogin, “Nuclear Posture Review delayed until mid to late March,” The Cable, Foreign Policy, 25 February 2010.http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/25/nuclear_posture_review_delayed_until_mid_to_late_march.

[ii] Quadrennial Defense Review Report, February 2010, Department of Defense.

http://www.defense.gov/QDR/images/QDR_as_of_12Feb10_1000.pdf.

[iii] “Allied bid for Obama to remove US European nuclear stockpile,” Agence France Press, 20 February 2010.http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100219/wl_afp/usnuclearnatodefenceeurope. Their letter to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was made public on Feb 26.

[iv] Meier, Oliver. 2009. German Nuclear Stance Stirs Debate. Arms Control Today, December.http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2009_12/GermanNuclearStance.

[v] Butcher, Martin. 2009a. Former Dutch Prime Minister Lubbers Calls for Withdrawal of US Nukes from Europe. The NATO Monitor, December 4; 2009b. No Public Statements on Nuclear Weapons and the Strategic Concept. The NATO Monitor, December 5. http://natomonitor.blogspot.com.

[vi] “Allied bid for Obama to remove US European nuclear stockpile,” Agence France Press, 20 February 2010.http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100219/wl_afp/usnuclearnatodefenceeurope.

[vii] Martin Butcher, Roundtable on Nuclear Weapons Policies and the NATO Strategic

Concept Review, House of Commons, London, 13 January 2010, Rapporteur’s Report.http://www.pugwash.org/reports/nw/NWP-NATO-Jan2010/NW_NATO_Roundtable_Report_Final1.pdf.

[viii] The three principles being, no possession, no production, and no introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Website. http://www.mofa.go.jp/POLICY/un/disarmament/nnp/index.html.

[ix] “The Strategic Posture Commission Report [a Congress-mandated study which is a forerunner to the coming nuclear posture review] contains at least one outright howler — the claim that the deployment of nuclear-armed cruise missiles is essential to extended deterrence in Asia: ‘In Asia, extended deterrence relies heavily on the deployment of nuclear cruise missiles on some Los Angeles class attack submarines—the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile/Nuclear (TLAM/N). This capability will be retired in 2013 unless steps are taken to maintain it. U.S. allies in Asia are not integrated in the same way into nuclear planning and have not been asked to make commitments to delivery systems. In our work as a Commission it has become clear to us that some U.S. allies in Asia would be very concerned by TLAM/N retirement. Let’s be very, very clear that as a result of the President’s 1991 Nuclear Initiatives, all TLAM/N nuclear weapons have been removed from U.S. Navy vessels. So, if extended deterrence to Japan relied heavily on the deployment of nuclear cruise missiles on some Los Angeles-class attack submarines, we would be hosed….[L]et’s not pretend these useless relics of the Cold War sitting in a climate-controlled warehouse are all that stand between us and nuclear-armed Japan. Because they aren’t.” [Jeffrey Lewis, Arms Control Wonk (8 May 2009).http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2284/japan-tlamn.]

[x] “US to retire nuclear Tomahawk missiles,” The Japan Times, 23 February 2010.http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100223a2.html.

[xi] Kristensen, Hans, “Status of U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe 2010,” Federation of American Scientists.http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/images/euronukes2010.pdf.

[xii] See, “Reshaping NATO’s Nuclear Declarations,” DisarmingConflict post, 30 January 2010.  http://www.cigionline.org/blogs/2010/1/reshaping-nato%E2%80%99s-nuclear-declarations.

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.

The 28 wars now being fought on the territories of 24 countries leave a legacy of squandered potential well beyond their immediately measurable consequences.

Project Ploughshares has been tracking global armed conflict since 1987 and the good news is that the current count of 28 armed conflicts in 24 countries is the lowest on record over the past two decades.[i] Wars were at a peak in the 1990s – reaching 44 armed conflicts in 1994 and 1995, followed by slight declines over the next four years, but then returning to 41 armed conflicts in 1999 and 2000. Since then there has been a steady decline, down to the current low of 28.[ii]

The bad news is that a gradual decline in the number of conflicts does not seem to be matched by a commensurate decline in conflict deaths.

Counting the war dead is clearly a difficult proposition. Many battles and attacks are fought in relative obscurity, and even wars with a high profile, like those in Afghanistan and Iraq, are not followed in detail by war correspondents (local or foreign) who can be present at all the battles, air strikes, and IED (improvised explosive devices) explosions to systematically document the casualties. Nevertheless, local communities, fighting forces, news organizations, and non-governmental groups do make serious efforts to count the dead and to report on them.

The methodology at Project Ploughshares is to monitor such reports in a very wide range of published sources[iii] and to tabulate the results, not for the purpose of publishing specific figures but to place conflicts in one of three broad categories – 1,000-10,000 combat deaths, 10,000-100,000, over 100,000). In the last three years the results have shown total war combat deaths (combatants and civilians) to be just over 50,000 per year. That figure is roughly 10 to 20 percent higher than the previous three years and it is reinforced by a major study carried out on behalf of the secretariat of the “Geneva Declaration,” a 2006 Declaration on Armed Violence and Development endorsed by more than 90 states. That 2008 study, The Global Burden of Armed Violence, estimates that from 2004 through 2008, on average, about 52,000 people were killed each year in armed conflict.[iv]

According to the Ploughshares tabulation, about 80 percent of the direct war deaths in 2008 occurred in six countries (ranked highest to lowest in combat deaths): Iraq, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, and India.

While 1,000 people are killed each week by fighting, most deaths in war are not combat deaths. They are deaths by hunger, disease, and the denial, through the chaos and disruption of war, of the basic essentials for living. The Geneva Declaration study estimates that these war-related deaths are currently at an average of about 200,000 per year – bringing annual war deaths to about 250,000 per year, or closer to 1,000 deaths per day.

Indeed, such estimates are most certainly conservative. Direct combat deaths are likely to be seriously underestimated – there is obviously no systematic way to be comprehensive in finding out about them all, or in publicly reporting them. And counting indirect deaths – those that are a consequence of war conditions rather than the result of direct violence – is even more daunting.

A detailed study by the International Rescue Committee[v] of deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo found that in the ten years from 1998 to 2007 there were 5.4 million excess deaths (that is, deaths not explained by normal life expectancy rates and so attributed to the devastatingly harsh and extraordinary conditions imposed by ongoing war). Of those, fewer than 10 percent were judged to be the result of direct violence. More than 90 percent were deaths from preventable causes, but which were not prevented because of the presence of armed conflict. By that estimate, annual war-related deaths would actually have been more than double the estimates of 52,000 direct and 200,000 indirect deaths each year of the last decade – in other words, the costs in human lives are probably greater than 1,500 every day.

Of course, another feature of current wars is their durability. Some 21 of the 28 current armed conflicts (that is, 75 percent) have been ongoing for more than 10 years. Of those, 10 are more than 20 years old; and of those, eight have seen fighting for more than 30 years. In four conflicts the fighting has been between five and ten years, and in only three is the fighting of less than five years’ duration.

And throughout, the impact on families and communities in these perennially war-torn societies quite literally becomes immeasurable. Schools remain closed, medical clinics cannot be built or operated, crops cannot be planted, markets can’t function, homes must be fled. The Geneva Declaration study does try to measure the impact and puts it this way: “Armed violence…corrodes the social fabric of communities, sows fear and insecurity, destroys human and social capital, and undermines development investments and aid effectiveness. The death and destruction of war – which ebbs and flows from year to year and is concentrated in a few countries – reduces gross domestic product growth by more than two percent annually, with effects lingering many years after the fighting ends.”[vi]

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] See the latest report at: http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-TitlePage.html.

[ii] An armed conflict, or war, is defined for the purposes of this tabulation as a political dispute in which has turned to armed combat involving the armed forces of at least one state, or one or more armed factions, in which at least 1,000 people have been killed by the fighting during the course of the conflict. A fuller definition is available at: http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-DefinitionArmedConflict.htm.

[iii] Link to sources: http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-Sources.html.

[iv] The Global Burden of Armed Violence, Geneva Declaration Secretariat, Geneva 2008, 162 pp.

http://www.genevadeclaration.org/resources-armed-violence-report.html.

[v] Reported in The Global Burden of Armed Violence, p. 31.

[vi] The Global Burden of Armed Violence, p. 1.

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,

Can the Taliban become allies in the campaign against al Qaeda?

The Globe and Mail began its main story on President Barack Obama’s new approach to Afghanistan[i] by reporting that the President is “vowing to ‘disrupt, dismantle and defeat’ the Taliban and al Qaeda.” In fact, the President pointedly did not promise to “defeat” the Taliban – and therein lies a key feature of the American policy shift.

President Obama[ii] did promise an increase in American forces to “take the fight to the Taliban in the south and east,” but the objective is not defined as “defeating” the Taliban; rather, the objective as defined by the White Paper of the President’s Interagency Policy Group (IPG)[iii] is to “secure Afghanistan’s south and east against the return of al Qaeda.”

The President’s speech included seven references to the Taliban, compared with 24 to al Qaeda. He certainly emphasized the need to ensure that the Afghan Government does not “fall to the Taliban,” because it would mean a return to “brutal governance” and, notably, that such a return would be accompanied by al Qaeda and would thus “allow al Qaeda to go unchallenged.” But preventing a Taliban controlled government in Kabul is not the same as defeating the Taliban.

The fight against the Taliban is consistently put in the context of denying al Qaeda and other extremists a haven in Afghanistan or Pakistan. But the promise of “defeat” is reserved for al Qaeda – along with pledges to “root out” and “target” it, and calling it “a cancer” in the region.

The message on the Taliban was significantly more nuanced – prevent its ascendance to national rule but at the same time open up new avenues to reconciliation with those elements outside of what he described as the core or extreme leadership that is linked to or sympathetic to al Qaeda.

Indeed, the Obama administration is essentially getting around to seeing mainstream Afghan and Pakistani Talibs as essential allies in the effort to defeat al Qaeda. The key to this shift are the Pashtun fighters that eschew the al Qaeda rhetoric and ideology and are instead driven by economic and social grievances against the Karzai Government, in the case of the Afghans, and are committed to resisting the foreign forces that they see as keeping their community from exercising its rightful role at the national level.

The Interagency Policy Group’s White Paper puts it this way: “While Mullah Omar and the Taliban’s hard core that have aligned themselves with al Qaeda are not reconcilable and we cannot make a deal that includes them, the war in Afghanistan cannot be won without convincing non-ideologically committed insurgents to lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda, and accept the Afghan Constitution.”

Acceptance of the existing constitution is the current mantra on reconciliation, but sooner or later it is likely that there will have to be some acknowledgement that Pashtun grievances are linked to their sense that the current constitution is not the product of a fully inclusive process – meaning that full acceptance of the current constitution is unlikely to survive as a condition for talks and reconciliatrion.

In the meantime, the IPG White Paper calls for the creation of provincial offices to develop reconciliation efforts in support of the Independent Directorate of Local Governance, “targeting mid-to-low level insurgents…[and] explor[ing] ways to rehabilitate captured insurgents drawing on lessons learned from similar programs in Iraq and other countries.”

What that describes, of course, is a basic amnesty program. Amnesty has been and is being tried, but not with great success. So when President Hamid Karzai welcomed Obama’s new approach, he also called for the UN to review its terrorist list and remove Taliban leaders not overtly linked to al Qaeda. It is a move that signals his recognition that the amnesty strategy is inadequate and that the Taliban leadership must also be brought into a peace process. Aljazeera quotes him as saying that such a move “would help create ‘the right environment’ for a peace process.” [iv]

The implication is that the war against the Taliban, which is in reality, or is at least perceived as, a war against the Pashtun community,[v] must give way, not only to amnesty offers to individual fighters, but to negotiations with key Pashtun and Taliban leadership that could be amenable to exploring new power-sharing arrangements within the context of constitutional governance and which would give the Pashtun community an appropriate stake (not control) in the central government.

The IPG emphasizes that even the more limited reconciliation process it advocates “must not become a mechanism for instituting medieval social policies that give up the quest for gender equality and human rights” – in other words, reconciliation (whether as amnesty or in a more comprehensive peace process) cannot mean acquiescence to the governance style and human rights violations of the Taliban of the 1990s.

Preventing a return to Taliban rule is not incompatible with exploring ways of bringing the Pashtun community and Afghan Taliban into the Afghan mainstream. That is an objective not specifically included in the plan President Obama outlined on Friday, but the President’s new approach could end up being a significant step in that direction.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes
[i] Paul Koring and Campbell Clark, “Obama unveils more robust Afghan strategy,” Globe and Mail, 28 March 2009. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090327.wafghan27/BNStory/International.
[ii] President Obama’s Remarks on New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, 27 March 2009. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/us/politics/27obama-text.html.
[iii] White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group’s Report on U.S. Policy towrd Afghanistan and Pakistan, 27 March 2009. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/us/politics/27text-whitepaper.html?ref=politics.
[iv] “Karzai welcomes new US strategy,” Aljazeera.Net, 28 March 2009. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/03/200932810106388317.html.
[v] Gwynne Dyer, “Obama needs to end America’s anti-Pashtun war,” 17 March 2009, Straight.Com. http://www.straight.com/print/206467#.

Defining the security assistance force in Afghanistan as a “NATO” mission misrepresents NATO’s role and has unwelcome implications for how security operations are conducted.

In an op-ed in today’s Globe and Mail, retired General Lewis Mackenzie,[i] among the best known of Canadian Peacekeeping commanders, referred to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan as “NATO’s,” implying it somehow belongs to NATO or is mandated by NATO, and insisted that NATO member countries have “obligations under the NATO Charter to provide adequate boots on the ground to defeat the Afghan insurgents.” His main point was to complain that most NATO members were unwilling to “honor” those obligations.

ISAF is not in fact a “NATO mission.” The American led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) force, still present and active there, is arguably much closer to being a NATO mission. Mounted in response to the 9-11 attacks, the US claimed the right to self-defence under the UN Charter (Article 51) when it attacked Afghanistan in response and NATO in turn invoked its Article V on grounds that an attack on one member of the alliance is an attack on them all. The US was not particularly looking for NATO back-up at the time, but some members, including Canada, provided military support to the OEF operation.

ISAF was and remains an entirely different operation with a different purpose. It was authorized by the Security Council (Res 1386) at the request of the 2001 Bonn Conference and given the specific task of assisting the Afghan government in maintaining security, initially only in Kabul and environs. The foreign troops of ISAF, including Canadians, are thus there at the request of the Security Council; they are not there under NATO Article V, and NATO members certainly do not, as Gen. Mackenzie claims, have “obligations under the NATO Charter to provide adequate boots on the ground to defeat Afghan insurgents.”

The obligations on NATO members are the same as those of any UN member – to consider how best to respond to the Security Council request. ISAF command was initially with the UK and then rotated to others, including Turkey and Germany, until August 2003 when NATO took over that role (currently more than a third of countries contributing troops to ISAF are non-NATO – although a large majority of actual troops come from NATO members).

ISAF was not a “UK mission” when it served in the command role, and it did not become a “NATO mission” when NATO took over.

In 2003 the Security Council “Authorize[d]expansion of the mandate of the International Security Assistance Force to allow it, as resources permit, to support the Afghan Transitional Authority and its successors in the maintenance of security in areas of Afghanistan outside of Kabul and its environs, so that the Afghan Authorities as well as the personnel of the United Nations and other international civilian personnel engaged, in particular, in reconstruction and humanitarian efforts, can operate in a secure environment, and to provide security assistance for the performance of other tasks in support of the Bonn Agreement.”

One problem with describing ISAF as NATO’s mission is that it encourages the redefinition of the ISAF mandate to fit a NATO model. The Security Council defines the mandate as helping the Afghan government to maintain security so that the Government, the UN and other civilians can do their work, “in particular, in reconstruction and humanitarian efforts,” to implement the Bonn agreement. But Gen. Mackenzie defines the mission as putting “adequate boots on the ground to defeat the Afghan insurgents.”

It is widely recognized that the insurgency will not end through military defeat of the insurgents. Indeed, security assistance to enable Afghan and UN authorities and NGOs to carry out the myriad of programs and measures needed to end the insurgency and thus establish some measure of peace now entails a broad range of military, diplomatic/reconciliation, humanitarian, and reconstruction/development activities. Countries in ISAF have a duty to pursue all those measures, not just put “boots on the ground.”

Another problem with reinventing ISAF as a NATO mission is that the focus inevitably turns to the interests and well-being of NATO rather than the interests and well-being of the people of Afghanistan – and only a serious excess of hubris could suggest those interests are one and the same.

eregehr@ploughshares.ca

Notes

[i] “Has Uncle Sam run out of patience,” The Globe and Mail, 3 February 2009,

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090202.wcoafghan03/BNStory/specialComment/home.

One of the more wrongheaded, but still ubiquitous, complaints voiced in the current Canadian debate over Afghanistan is that the Germans and others with forces in the north are not doing any “heavy lifting” and thus are both undermining the fight against the Taliban and – which some seem to find even more disturbing – putting the future of NATO in question. Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier echoed the point when he told CTV News on February 1 that within military circles the question is regularly asked: “Can you move troops from the rest of the country into the south where the need is most definite?”[i]

It is a Kandahar-centric question that fails to recognize that international forces in the north are in fact mounting credible and essential operations that could well turn out to be key to the long-term viability of development and good governance in Afghanistan. To cut back forces in the north (“north” being shorthand for those parts of the country generally onside with the Government and not heavily challenged by insurgent forces) and to redeploy them to the counterinsurgency war in the south (the parts of country plagued by a growing insurgency and where suspicion of the Kabul Government runs highest) would not necessarily or not even likely improve the chances of suppressing the insurgency, but would definitely put the stability of the north in further jeopardy.

In November 2007, for example, the BBC reported that in the north the always present violent crime is now being exacerbated by growing political attacks: “Fighters loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar‚Äîa former mujahideen leader who is battling the Kabul government independently from the Taleban ‚Äîare known to be active in Baghlan.”[ii]Another November example, a report from Radio Free Europe, describes northern militia leaders as “exploiting Kabul’s preoccupation with the violence-ridden south and east in order to stake claims to their old fiefdoms.” Some are rearming to prepare for what they fear may be another war with a resurgent Taliban.[iii]A new Oxfam International (2008) report on development and humanitarian priorities for Afghanistan also warns that the focus on the south is leading to neglect of the north and increasing the danger of spreading insecurity.[iv]

To preserve stability and advance human security in the north, stabilization forces must continue to contribute to conditions that are conducive to peacebuilding, that is, to reconstruction, disarmament, security sector reform, and accountable governance. The Manley Panel (p. 32) says that “there is not yet a peace to keep in Afghanistan,” but in fact there is a peace to keep and build in the north. It is a fragile peace, to be sure, but it is one that must be nurtured and built up or it will be lost.

It is primarily in the north where there is currently a realistic prospect of gradually shifting security responsibility from ISAF to Afghan forces, but only with increased attention to training local police who will be trusted and to building the kind of economic and social conditions on the ground that are conducive to political stability. In the “clear, hold, and develop” framework, the 2001 invasion by US and northern Alliance forces was able to “clear” the north of the Taliban because the latter had few roots there. Since then the north has been “held” by a combination of Afghan (Government and militias) and ISAF troops. However, the “develop” phase (reconstruction and governance, in particular) has been chronically under-resourced. Governance reform has been resisted by both the central government and local officials and politicians (and militia leaders) in attempts to preserve their own advantages in a still corrupt system.

Much of the current debate is about whether or not Canadian forces should be engaged in combat operations. The real choice, however, is between counter-insurgency combat and a genuine post-conflict peace support and security assistance operation designed to stabilize the regions already largely under Government control. Both counterinsurgency clearing operations in Taliban-held regions and security patrols in government-held areas are UN Chapter VII (use of force) operations involving the resort to lethal force. The former, however, takes the fight to the Taliban without, as experience is showing (see the Feb 16 posting here), effectively suppressing the insurgency, while the latter focuses on providing security protection in communities where the insurgents are not present in the same way—even though the presence of spoilers is and will continue to be a challenge.

The explicit rejection of a combat role in Kandahar province should be understood as a rejection of counterinsurgency combat in favour of security patrols consistent with peace support operations in post-conflict areas of the country. In Afghanistan peace support operations are not carried out by Blue Helmets with binoculars and radios, but an armed security force with a mandate to protect people in their homes, communities, schools and places of work.

So, the general priority should now be to focus on the “hold” and “develop” tasks to ensure a stable future for Afghans in locations where the Government is basically in control and the insurgency is not present.

A British Humanitarian worker and researcher writes the following after recent visits to Afghanistan:^[v]

“Almost everyone I spoke to on my recent visit thinks that this strategy, which essentially consists of trying to capture territory held by the insurgents and then to “love-bomb” local residents with aid projects is crazy. It is a terrible way of distributing aid, it is not buying hearts and minds and it is actually creating an incentive for people in peaceful areas to stage “incidents” so that they can get “more, more, more” attention as well.

“Western strategy within Afghanistan should concentrate on securing the areas of the country that are currently under the nominal control of the government, strengthening the institutions of the state and tackling corruption and impunity. That will require a significant reorientation of existing policy – and real political courage – but until the institutions of government begin to command the respect of ordinary Afghans there is no hope achieving a durable political settlement.

“That does not mean the withdrawal of international military forces, but it should mean winding down aggressive military operations in the south and east. There is absolutely no point in asking British soldiers to risk their lives to capture territory during the day that the Taliban will simply reoccupy the next night. No amount of ill-thought-out aid is going to win the hearts and minds of a village whose children then get killed by an air strike.”

International military forces are needed to help “hold” the fragile peace in the north through stabilization or peace support operations that can be appropriately called Chapter VII peacekeeping. Efforts to “develop” that fragile peace into a sustainable peace are obviously what we know as post-conflict peacebuilding. Now is definitely not the time to shift forces from that vital peace support role in the north to join the unsuccessful counterinsurgency war in the south.

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[i] “German troops to stay in Afghan north despite pleas,” The Associated Press, February 1, 2008 (http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080201/germany_afghanistan_080201).

[ii] “Afghan suicide blast ‘kills 40’,” BBC News, November 6, 2007 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7081012.stm).

[iii] Ron Synovitz, “Afghanistan: Armed Northern Militias Complicate Security,” RFE/Rl, November 4, 2007 (http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/11/ffca5de1-b96c-4cdf-810b-831bec1b5a6c.html).

[iv] “Afghanistan: Development and Humanitarian Priorities,” Oxfam International, January 2008 (http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/RMOI-7BE2T6/$File/full_report.pdf).

[v] Conor Foley, “Who is Right on Afghanistan?” February 15, 2008, Guardian Unlimited (http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2008/02/who_is_right_on_afghanistan_1.html).